Sociological Imagination and Religion - Case Study Example

Reading well-known books tends to centre people’s awareness on their importance for contemporary dilemmas. The treatise of the sociological imagination, initially released in 1959, overcomes this challenge effortlessly as it still presents motivation and delight. C. Wright Mill’s essential themes such as how history influences and is influenced by life history, how public concerns are related to personal dilemmas, keep on encouraging researchers (Schaefer & Lamm 1995). Mills was the very first to claim that “the modern age is being succeeded by a postmodern period” (ibid, 107) because of the collapse of the two most important political ideologies of the contemporary period, namely, liberalism and socialism. Yet, the treatise’s foremost contribution is related to its exceptionally famous title, which implies that sociology at its finest can provide an ingenious, imaginative and sympathetic recognition of human diversity. Hence, the distinctiveness of Mill’s framework is best described in terms of its significance. He argues that the Enlightenment principles of universal knowledge and religion can be obtained through the classical convention in the field of social science and through relying on the general academic carrying out a role as a driving force of social change and political analysis (Hamilton 2001). I. Secularisation and its Discontent For scholars of meaning the course of secularisation in modern industrial societies is challenging, which is the same case for every assumption that situate the origin of religion in the human circumstance. In the case of Berger, if religion offers the safeguard against estrangement, then how is secularisation achievable? Several theorists such as Luckmann have plainly endeavoured in rejecting that secularisation is occurring at all. It is a delusion created by the collapse of conventional forms of religion. Instead of these forms, nevertheless, new forms are developing consistently, these thinkers claim. Even though he has altered his perspective more in recent times, for a greater part of his profession, Berger, however, has never rejected the realities of secularisation and was for several decades one of the primary scholars of this phenomenon (ibid). The downfall of religion in modern times has been envisioned by several thinkers, particularly those thinking and writing in the nineteenth century. These theorists, such as Tylor, Marx and Freud, all predicted religion to weaken as science emerged to preoccupy the manner of thinking of modern societies. Some, who perceive religion in more purposeful terms, predicted the departure of religion in the common and established forms to be substituted by something founded upon non-transcendental institutions. Comte conceived a new religion founded upon the logical and systematic fundamentals of the new science of sociology to load the empty spaces. Durkheim witnessed the establishment of a new well-designed comparable to religion surfacing in the values of the French Revolution (Wilson 1982). Several other theorists have denied such insights, maintaining that religion is as much a fragment of modern societies as it has traditionally been of any society beforehand, while frequently recognising that its certain forms may definitely change. Bellah, for instance, has disputed the concept of secularisation forms element of an assumption of modern society originating from the Enlightenment response to the Christian religious practice distinguished by a well-built cognitive prejudice and focus on orthodox principles. The theory of an evolving secularisation functions somehow, as Bellah maintains, as a parable which generated an emotionally consistent image of reality. In this position it is itself a religious principle rather than a scientific one. Because religion carries out vital social roles, it will recurrently move into the core of people’s cultural concerns, Bellah predicts (Hamilton 2001). Several other thinkers, specifically recently, have, in the face of the upsurge of numerous new religious movements and of fundamentalism, arrive to parallel conclusions. For other theorists of this point of view, too, religion will by no means lose its supernatural or transcendental attribute, in spite of the rationalism and scientific or practical foundation of modern society (ibid). The argument over secularisation hence presents individuals with a decisively strange situation; what is supposed to have been a deep-seated change distinguishing modern society is assumed by others not to have occurred at all. It is to a certain extent as if economic historians were in profound conflict as to whether the pivotal industrial revolution ever in fact took place. It is as if an extremely great and undoubtedly concrete object has been stripped away of spirit as if by supernatural method. Apparently, an exceptionally comprehensive literature has been produced by this argument which has exposed a noteworthy intensity (Wilson 1982). There has been a predisposition for each argument to accuse the other with ideological prejudice or wishful thinking. It is possibly real that those who advocate the secularisation assumption are not themselves much drawn on the issue of religion whereas those who are against it are more devotedly oriented. Others have claimed for the rejection of the concept, occasionally on the justifications that it is an instrument used by those against religion to demoralise it (ibid). This is no longer necessarily factual than it would be to mention than an exceptionally comprehensive concept of religion has been the warhead of those who discover the very concept of the secularisation of modern society an unwelcoming one. II. Karl Marx and Religion Marx believes in the assumption of Hegel and Feuerbach that alienation is intimately connected with a particular form of false consciousness about an individual’s true essence, and that the worldview instance of this false consciousness is to be located in religion, particularly in Christianity. However, he does not consent that alienation is comprised of a circumstance of false consciousness, or that it is brought about by one. The intriguing aspect about religious delusions is that they both provide appearance to alienation, to a condition of the meaninglessness and unimportance of human existence, and too provide people consolation and reassurance for their alienation, in the guise of an spiritual calling and the guarantee of a non-estranged life in the after life (Wood 2004). Estranged consciousness hence includes two opposing concepts, namely, it grieves that people’s natural human existence, well thought-out in itself, is estranged, indecisive and useless; however, it asserts that human existence is not in reality alienated after all, if only people place on it the appropriate transcendental interpretation. Hegel and Feuerbach maintain that individuals are alienated merely because they misinterpret their own selves and the genuine character of the human affair. Therefore, it is their perspective that the delusion of alienated consciousness is comprised merely in the initial conception, in its downbeat outlook toward worldly human existence (ibid). According to the two thinkers, the consoling guarantees of religion include the actual reality of the issue. For Marx, nevertheless, the entire occurrence of alienated consciousness develops into transparency as soon as people take on the reverse assumption, which is that the ungratified consciousness informs the reality in its grievances, not in its comforts. Religion provides expression to a form of existence which actually is estranged, bare, demoralised and dehumanised. “Religious misery is in part an expression of actual misery and in the part the protest against actual misery. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the soul of a heartless world, the spirit of spiritless conditions” (Wood 2004: p. 13). Religious delusions have permanence on individuals because their deceitful promises offer an impression of purpose and accomplishment to people’s alienated existence. Religious faiths are the incredible realisation of the human value, since the human value holds no real actuality. Religion reunites people to an alienated existence and makes it appear reasonable to individuals; it provides people deceptive purpose for a form of life which devoid of this delusion would be experienced openly for what it is, unredeemed emptiness (Schaefer & Lamm 1995). The social significance of religion, therefore, is to obscure people’s consciousness and indulge them to the anguishes of their alienated position. This is apparently what Marx implies when he refers to religion as the ‘opium of the people’ (Wood 2004: p. 14). III. Max Weber and Religion As Weber has argued, the influence of Protestantism was not simply negative, in allowing the practices outlawed by the Catholic Church, but as well as positive, transforming religion to capitalistic objectives. The primary mechanism of this he taken into account the doctrine of the ‘calling’ which emerged with Luther and opened up the principle of asceticism serving upon the non-clergy in addition to the religious; an asceticism not of the convent, but exercised in the circumstances of everyday existence, by the absolute surrender of any form of self-indulgence, by continuous hard work in one’s ‘calling’, which was therefore advanced to the excellence of a religious observance. Weber claimed, furthermore, that on the Calvinists assumption over this dogma they created accomplishment in one’s calling an external and obvious sign of the attainment of spiritual grace (Turner 1993). For more that five decades the Weber’s premise, which credited to Calvinism an influential aspect in the development of modern capitalism, has been forcefully discussed. In his renowned essay entitled ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Calvinism”, Max Weber had proposed that Calvinism played a significant role to the emergence of capitalism in several ways, through relaxing the moderations which up till now had significantly served to hamper its growth; through cultivating the economic virtues of hard work, thriftiness, truthfulness, cautiousness, and temperance; and, most importantly, through providing a psychological boost to the emergence of the spirit of capitalism, “the temper of single-minded concentration upon pecuniary gain” (Samuelsson & French 1964, 56). The controversy motivated by the circulation of Weber’s essay created substantial dispute that frequently served to confuse the points at concern, yet throughout the years the going on debate has served to eliminate lots of the issue from the area of dispute and to restrict the emphasis of the fundamental issue that remains (ibid). Weber never located time to commence on the historical mission of substantiating his premise through a thorough investigation of the actual religious and economic origin of particular communities. Hence, from an historian’s perspective, he left himself liberal to the quite legitimate charge that he aimed to show, for instance, the influence of Calvinism on the economic existence of Holland and the Rhineland through making use of depictions sketched from Anglo-Saxon writer. It has as well as been proposed, to a certain extent dismissively, to be certain, that he raised the concern whether or not John Calvin was a Calvinist himself, for he characterized Calvinism basically in terms of the perspective embodied by John Wesley and Benjamin Franklin (Samuelsson & French 1964). Moreover, it has been recognized that Weber some times fell victim to the enticement to manipulate history in the objective of his argument. Such manipulation, states Tawney, is at all times “the temptation of one who expounds a new and fruitful idea” (ibid, 63) and Weber’s thesis is “not altogether free” (ibid, 63) of this imperfection. Lastly, Weber’s assumption that for his aims ‘ascetic Protestantism’ could be dealt with as a single whole has been proven to be erroneous. It has been made richly obvious, as Tawney recognized, that the economic individualism which Weber pinpointed in particular features of late post-Restoration Puritanism would have terrified the former Calvinists, as well as the English puritans (Robertson 1933, 73). IV. Emile Durkheim and Religion Emile Durkheim was probably the earliest sociologist to acknowledge the critical significance of religion in human societies. He observed its appeal to the individual but more relevantly he highlighted that religion is socially established. In Durkheim’s perspective, religion is a communal act and involves several forms of behaviour in which individuals interrelate with others. As in his study on suicide, Durkheim was not very much enthusiastic in the characters of religious devotees as he was in recognising religious behaviour within a social milieu. Durkheim initiated sociological investigation of religion through defining religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things” (Schaefer & Lamm 1995: p. 395). Durkheim maintained that religious faiths differentiate between the everyday world and particular phenomenon that rise above the commonplace. Emile Durkheim perceived religion as an integrative influence in human society, a framework manifested by the functionalist perspective nowadays. Durkheim was concerned with the baffling question, “How can human societies be held together when they are generally composed of individuals and social groups with diverse interests and aspirations (Schaefer & Lamm 1995: p. 396). In his belief, religious ties frequently transcend these individual and decisive forces, patriotism or nationalism may provide the end. Religious institutions, comprised of values and traditions, may not be superficially elaborated as an absolute illusion, parallel to nothing in reality. Sociologists, then, specifically, could not maintain such point of view (Hamilton 2001). As a matter of fact, it is an important assumption of sociology that a human foundation cannot rely upon deception and mistakes, devoid of which it could not carry on. However, an individual must gain knowledge as to how to go beyond the representation to the reality which it symbolises and which provides its purpose. The most uncivilized and the most unusual rituals and practices and the most perplexing myths interpret some human requirement, quite a few attribute of life, either personal or social. This is then, at least, the disposition of sociological imagination in the religious institution. References Hamilton, M. The Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2001. Robertson, H.M. Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and His School. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1933. Samuelsson, K & French, G. Religion and Economic Action: A Critique of Max Weber. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964. Schaefer, R. & Lamm, R. Sociology. New York: McGraw Hill, 1995. Turner, B. Max Weber: From History to Modernity. London: Routledge, 1993. Wilson, B. Religion in Sociological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Wood, A. Karl Marx. New York: Routledge, 2004. Read More