Functionalists believe religion is a conservative force as it promotes social harmony, social integration and social solidarity through value consensus. It is a functional prerequisite that meets the needs of society and its individual members to ensure survival of society itself. This maintains the status quo, which then reaches social stability. The Functionalist Durkheim says that religion provides beliefs and practices that unite people and bind society together creating social solidarity. Durkheim also argued that ritual and ceremony are essential to bind society together.
Journal Article Review II: The Church as Forgiving Community: An Initial Model Journal Article Review II: The Church As Forgiving Community: An Initial Model Summary Magnuson and Enright (2008) offer a discussion of forgiveness and how important it is to the complex human being. Forgiveness is first recognized in the Bible. It is a way of ending resentment and responding to others in a generously. Forgiveness does not involve forgetting the unjust act that occurred, but it offers mercy to the offender (Magnuson & Enright, 2008). Even though forgiveness is a part of the Church in that it is expressed in God's Word, social scientists such as Smedes (1984) and Worthington and DiBlasio (1990) explored the topic even more in the recent years.
Love 2351 What is more important, Love or Compassion? In human philosophy, the themes of Religion and Love seem co-existent if not strongly intertwined. This sentiment stems from the notions of all the major religions, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism, which all seem to advocate lessons of love and compassion for other human beings. The Dalai Lama speaks of compassion as being “the basis of human nature: that humans can change the course of their own destinies” (Understanding Our Fundamental Nature, 2002). On the other hand Christianity, as proposed by the second most important commandment by Jesus, speaks of loving your neighbor as one loves themselves.
Durkheim underlines that the sacred does not need to have a god or other supernatural things but can be anything that people regard as sacred such as an animal which was shown in his study of the Arunta tribe, where family members come together occasionally to perform rituals which involved worshiping a sacred totem (is a sacred object having symbolic importance to a group) such as an animal which signified the clans identity. He believed that when worshipping the totem, people are really worshiping society. As well as Durkheim’s view on sacred symbols represented society’s collective conscience which is the shared norms and values, beliefs and knowledge that makes social life between individuals possible. He believed that participating in regular
Religion for a functionalist would be viewed as more of a reinforcement for the values that society holds. One thing almost all religions have in common is the lesson of being “good”, to treat others how you would want to be treated. It also gives people something to turn to when they feel lost, or something to blame when life is not going the way the would like. Religion holds people together in many ways, offering stability to society. Religion does, however hold both manifest and latent functions.
On those premise it is asserted that religion play an important part in nurturing the virtue needed for a free society. Matthew Spaulding’s Meaning of religion and Liberty, asserts this about religion and morality: “They aid good government by teaching men their moral obligations and creating the condition for decent politics” (p313.2008). While not everyone morality depends on religion, I do believe and support argument that religion is necessary to morality. The religious principles speak to morality and morality aid virtue. Outside of the realm of government if we look at our society today many of our moral have changed.
The ethical issues that are at the discretion of the statistician can thus be addressed from a Christian worldview. For instance, one of the ethical issues is the ownership of data and the disclosure of private information regarding the client and the data collected. This ethical issue can be approached using the golden rule of “do unto others as you would have done to you” or loving ones neighbor as yourself (Moreland and Craig, 2003). Another ethical issue that arises with the practice of statistics is the concept of chance and probability. This can be addressed with the Christian worldview that scientific truth is not something that is predetermined and instead adapts itself to interpretation and human requirements (Geertsema,
They emphasise the conflict and inequality and they argue that some individuals and groups may benefit more from religion at the expense of others. Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess the functionalist view that religion benefits society as a whole and its individual members. (18 marks) Functionalists believe that society is a human body, all working together to achieve one goal of togetherness and consensus. Religion is supposed to benefit everyone as a whole and the individual members as well as it is one of the many functions that help run the society. Many sociologists have put forward arguments as to why this is true.
The view that religion is a conservative force stems from theories from Functionalists, Marxists and Feminists. Each see religion as keeping society in its current form, despite the theories coming to the same conclusion the reasons differ. For Durkheim religion acts as a vital organ in society and keeps society alive by maintaining social solidarity. Functionalists believe that religion creates a shared value consensus and acts as a social glue helping unite individuals as well as helping them cope with stress. In comparison to this view Marxists see society as promoting the interests of the ruling class and legitimating suffering and therefore preventing social change.
Emille Durkheim was as many know a functionalist and like any other functionalist he examined religion in terms of what a societies needs where. Functionalists are concerned with the way religion contributes to meeting the needs of a society. “The function of religion is the contribution it makes to meeting such functional prerequisites - for example, its contribution to social solidarity.”# Durkheim set out to establish the fact that religion was not divinely or supernaturally inspired but was in fact a product of society. He sought to identify the common things that religion placed an emphasis upon, as well as what effects those religious beliefs (the product of social life) had on the lives of all within a society. To have some insight into Durkheim’s view of religion and social solidarity, we shall firstly look at his idea of the sacred and the profane.