Within the Christian tradition, the Puritan movement is one historical example of ritual extremism, rejecting other Christian denominations as insufficiently pure and compromised by lax tolerance of cultural practices. The social dimension is concerned with intergroup relations with other groups religious and otherwise as well as intragroup processes, reflected in norms regarding how to interact with others.
Extremists on the social dimension typically have a hostile view of other faiths. In their view, out-groups use sinister conspirators as pawns to influence their religious group members Fealy, ; Kohut et al. As a result, blaming others e. In contrast, more moderate members of a religion often attribute the root causes of in-group problems to internal factors such as anti-intellectual biases, geopolitical instability, and corruption Lackey, Moderate groups also place greater emphasis on the need to change to address modern concerns.
Consequently, more moderate groups tend to be more open to collaboration in inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue whereas more extreme religious groups emphasize rejection and avoidance. Interfaith dialogue is often developed by more moderate religious activists to strengthen inter-religious cooperation as a way to solve common problems e.
However, more extreme religious groups often actively reject this collaborative effort, as they perceive inter-religious dialogue as part of a conspiracy to weaken the faith in their religion. Turning to intragroup relations with other members of the faith community: religion serves as an organizing set of key values that are captured and expressed in group norms. In the context of social relationships, such group norms may vary in the extent to which they tolerate difference and dissent within the religious group.
At times, harsh attitudes toward dissenters and deviants may prevail when universal values of tolerance and group-specific values clash and individuals are forced to follow group-specific values. For instance, because Islam forbids liquors, some Muslims would like to force the government to ban the trade in alcohol, without considering that other groups of people have different norms permitting alcohol consumption Osman, a.
In the context of Indonesia, an active group called the Islamic Defenders Front FPI is one of many aiming to force the entire nation to follow one version of Islamic social norms Arifianto, Hence, the social dimension of religious extremism in our approach is indicated in Indonesia by patterns of externally attributing the causes of in-group disadvantages, and forcing out-groups as well as all in-group members to follow narrow, prescriptive social norms.
Naturally, social and political dimensions of religion will often be inter-related, especially where groups seek political power to impose their socially extreme viewpoint. However, in distinguishing the two dimensions, we highlight that some groups will be socially extreme without endorsing extreme political views or seeking political power. Groups who expel internal heretics and who shun contact with infidels without trying to dominate them may fall into this category, in our model.
As mentioned, the discourse of religious extremism has mostly been related to the political context Fealy, ; Zarkasyi, In an attempt to understand different forms of extremism more comprehensively, we compared these groups on the other three dimensions.
Before outlining our findings, it is important to note that the classification of a particular group as politically extreme was based on specific historical events and developments: by acts of political rebellion by Darul Islam Domain of Islam and Negara Islam Indonesia Indonesian Islamic State in This was also the basis for selecting as extreme the current political movement Hizbut Tahrir and Islamic defender front FPI who have gained support after the reform of Fealy, ; Muhtadi, ; Osman, a.
All groups score high in extremism on the political dimensions in that they demand a comprehensive legalization of sharia , a fully Islamic state, recreation of Caliphate, and the abolition of democracy in Indonesia.
For example, the Islamic Defenders Front FPI supports a comprehensive legalization of sharia, but endorses democracy and rejects the revival of the Islamic state and Caliphate Fealy, Another group Laskar Jihad or Jihad Troops demands comprehensive sharia and rejects democracy, but also rejects the revival of the Islamic state and Caliphate.
Both these commonalities and differences have consequences for their relationship with other religious groups and the way they aim to achieve their goals.
While we acknowledge the importance of unpacking the political dimension into constituent elements in some cases, our argument is that to fully understand these groups, we also need to explore where these groups stand on the other three dimensions of religious extremism i. In terms of extremism in the theological dimension, notions about an angry God who uses natural disasters punitively are particularly important to tease the different extremist groups apart.
For instance, some Muslim groups in Indonesia claim that ritual celebration of the local tradition in Palu in Central Sulawesi is a main cause of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indonesian coast in , killing more than people. Likewise, such attributions also dominated when explaining the earthquake in Lombok Island Habdan and Baits, These groups emphasized that the earthquake is a punishment from God to show disapproval of the politically different attitudes that are promoted by the political leader of the Island Hasan, Interestingly, such theological beliefs do not lead to a push for change of the political system, but only to an invitation to return to Islamic norms as they understand them.
This shows that an extreme theological belief may not be correlated with extremism on the political dimension. However, extremism in the theological dimension may also be related to a narrow interpretation of jihad as a core principle in Islam. Most Muslim groups believe that jihad means any zealous effort to bring about a better world Esposito, Theological beliefs restricting the meaning of jihad to waging holy war have an impact on political extremism, in that these can drive believers into intentions to verbally or physically attack the hated out-groups to engage in jihad.
Finally, some groups that are located at the extreme end of the ritual dimension are actively campaigning to purify religious rituals and to suppress local traditions that are perceived as deviating from Islam.
For example, some groups such as the Salafi movement and al Wahdah al Islamiyah in Indonesia campaign against local traditions and push for the Muslims to relinquish traditions that are perceived as not taught by the prophet Salman, Importantly though, these movements do not use physical violence in their efforts, and they accept and participate in the political system in Indonesia. Thus, although these groups tend to be extreme on the ritual dimension, they are more moderate on other dimensions.
For example, they have a broader conception of jihad i. Even though such social extremism often involves intolerance of norm violations, social extremism is not always followed by extremism on other dimensions e. In particular, social extremism in Indonesia is rarely linked to terror campaigns. The different ways in which religious groups express their religious identity on the theological, ritual, social, and political dimensions affect not only the ways they aim to achieve their goals but also the ways they relate to other religious groups.
Using social identity theory as a lens to conceptualize intergroup relations Turner and Oakes, , we propose that the nature of intergroup relations between moderate and extreme religious groups is determined by the perceived degree of similarity on the four dimensions.
As an illustration, two groups or more can cooperate with each other in their collective action when they perceive shared values and a larger identity, while breaking into conflict when internal differences are salient. For example, in Indonesia, when the former governor of Jakarta Basuki Tjahaya Purnama aka Ahok was eventually indicted on charges of insulting a section of the Quran, many Muslim groups were united in their efforts to demand punishment of him. A series of mass protests against the perceived blasphemy were attended by hundreds of thousands of people across the country Fealy, From an identity perspective, it can be argued that the shared outrage about the former governor who was perceived to have insulted Islam brought different Muslim groups together, and different groups worked together to address the common grievances and the common threats to the superordinate Muslim identity.
Despite this example of unity, it is also clear that there are many instances when relationships between moderate as well as more extreme religious groups are more tense. We argue that these tensions can also be better understood by taking account of the way in which moderate vs. For example, members of The Prosperous Justice Party PKS and members of Hizbut Tahrir largely take the same stance on the social dimension in that both groups want to generate a new Islamic social order via the legalization of sharia in Indonesia.
Their disagreement emerges on the political dimension because PKS supports the democratic system, as indicated by their participation in the general election, while Hizbut Tahrir absolutely rejects the democratic system and avoids democratic politics as a way to raise political power. The possibility of compromise between two politically extreme movements depends on the level of identity i.
When they confront common enemies e. However, open conflict is also likely, even if the groups are similarly extreme on one dimension, when differences on another dimension are salient.
A similar pattern may be observed among groups of Muslims who are identified as extreme in ritual dimensions. The Salafy movement and other groups e. That is, when they face moderate Muslims e. However, those ritually extreme groups can conflict with each other when political differences are salient. For example, many Salafy group members perceive that public protest is an illegitimate action according to Islam, while other groups who share their extreme identity on ritual dimension perceive it as legitimate tactic.
The differences along the political dimension can lead them into efforts to dominate each other, and open contests for power. The consequence of similarity and difference in the dimensions of religious extremism is relevant previous work on identity and conflict Haslam et al.
In this model, the salience of subgroup identity e. However, when superordinate identity is salient e. According to this, an approach to religious extremism that focuses solely on one dimension will miss the different ways in which the two groups align e. To apply this model in more practical uses, we need to revisit the reason of this multidimensional model development.
Unidimensional categorization of moderate vs. We propose that extremism is expressed along different dimensions and the mapping of groups and individuals using multiple dimensions in the model will help to understand the patterns of narratives and actions delivered by the groups.
This allows for a more nuanced understanding of religious violence whereby we acknowledge that violence can be motivated by different reasons not necessarily related to political causes and that the interplay between different dimensions on which extremism can be expressed can either fuel or restrict religious violence e.
Moving away from over-simplified representations of religious groups as politically motivated, the presented framework offers a practical method to understand the multi-faceted nature of extremism. It aims to analyze religion at both a group and individual level, augmenting scholarly understanding of the religious dimensions that may be relevant to enable accurate predictions of violent extremism based on ideological narratives Kruglanski et al.
Even though the four dimensions of religious extremism that we present here are informed by prior research on extremism and religiosity, the model that we developed is tailored to the context of Indonesian Muslims and their religious movements. When adopting this model in different or wider contexts e.
Practically speaking, when adopting the model in other contexts, researchers need to engage in qualitative exploration of the dimensions religious groups use to express their religiosity.
For every dimension found in a particular context, the researchers should then explore what the indicators are of extremism compared to moderate beliefs. Rich descriptive information about the context and specific intra- or intergroup processes need to be considered to enable a multidimensional model tailored and adapted to specific contexts. In this, some dimensions e. Such an exploration may well lead to the conclusion that the political dimension is the most important dimension to explain violent behavior and that the other three proposed dimensions e.
Violent actions against Rohingya Muslims in by Rakhine Buddhist were justified as mere crackdowns against suspected Rohingya insurgents, suggesting that the political dimension may be most important to understand extremism in this context.
However, in other contexts, other dimensions appear to have triggered violence. Specifically, the attack was motivated by a strong consensually shared belief among cult members that violence of this form would wash away their sins and this would allow them as a group to survive the imminent Armageddon. What these examples also make clear is that the content of the different dimensions and the way that moderate vs.
Specifically, while it is important to understand political violence among Indonesian Muslims in terms of views on sharia laws, in the Myanmar context, political extremism centers on views against minorities and their rights. Or, while theological extremism in Indonesia is concerned with the view of God and ritual extremism relates to tolerance for deviating from generally accepted normative ways of enacting religion, for Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, extremism on these dimensions is related to narratives and beliefs around Doomsday.
Finally, when applying the model in other contexts, it is important to consider new dimensions that may be important in understanding extremism. For example, Smart identifies seven dimensions of Buddhist religiosity, including novel dimensions such as the mythological and the experiential. Scholars would discover if these dimensions or others are relevant to differences between moderates and extremists for example, if Buddhist groups who are more mystical are less likely to be extremist through exploratory research and pilot testing.
We, of course, support the prevention of violent extremism, but we also support the notion that being extreme in religious beliefs is not always linked to support for employing violent tactics Austin, Motivating people to participate in violent intergroup conflict, strong narratives about injustice and expected changes may be involved Moghaddam, ; Horgan, However, in many contexts i.
By capturing how extremism is manifested across particular dimensions and how these dimensions predict support for violence, policy-makers can be more focused in countering the religious narratives that might be employed as the catalyst of violence and which are not relevant to address or even counter-productive. This paper highlights that religious extremism is not a unified and ubiquitous phenomenon; rather, religious extremists differ on a number of dimensions in how they express their religion, and consequently, how they aim to achieve important group goals.
For example, even though Salafi movements in Indonesia perceive politics as morally corrupt Chozin, ; Parveez, , they nevertheless tend to avoid a political debate, and obey the rules of the existing government insofar as the government does not prohibit their religious rituals Haron and Hussin, ; Parveez, In a similar vein, the group Hizb al-tahrir is extreme in its stance on the political dimension, as it aims to revive the Islamic empire by overthrowing the concept of the nation state e.
The group believes that jihad means a holy war, but not as the way to establish the Caliphate, but to conquer other nations after the Caliphate is established Azman, Muslims in the U.
In the U. Indeed, when it comes to evolution, U. Muslims are closer to U. American Muslims are even more likely than Muslims in other countries to firmly reject violence in the name of Islam. For more details on how U. Muslims compare with Muslims worldwide, see Appendix A: U. These and other findings are discussed in more detail in the remainder of this report, which is divided into seven chapters:. This report also includes an appendix with comparable results from past Pew Research Center surveys of Muslims in the United States.
A glossary of key terms can be found here. The survey questionnaire and a topline with full results are available as a PDF. The online version of the report also includes an infographic. This report covers attitudes and views on a variety of social and political questions. A previous Pew Research report , released in August , addressed religious affiliation, beliefs and practices among Muslims.
Together, the 39 countries and territories included in the survey are home to about two-thirds of all Muslims in the world. The surveys that are the basis for this report were conducted across multiple years. Fifteen sub-Saharan countries with substantial Muslim populations were surveyed in as part of a larger project that examined religion in that region. In 21 of these countries, Muslims make up a majority of the population. In these cases, nationally representative samples of at least 1, respondents were fielded.
The number of self-identified Muslims interviewed in these countries ranged from in Lebanon to 1, in Bangladesh. In Russia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Muslims are a minority, oversamples were employed to ensure adequate representation of Muslims; in both cases, at least 1, Muslims were interviewed.
This report is not asserting a causal relationship in either direction. Articles 1b and1j; and Abiad, Nisrine. Article 1; and Abiad, Nisrine. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.
It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Newsletters Donate My Account.
Research Topics. Regional Differences Attitudes toward Islamic law vary significantly by region. Sharia Sharia, or Islamic law, offers moral and legal guidance for nearly all aspects of life — from marriage and divorce, to inheritance and contracts, to criminal punishments. What is a Median? Related Publications Apr 30, Publications Apr 4, Uncategorized Oct 28, Uncategorized Oct 15, First it is not devout Muslims who become terrorists. Second, terrorists are driven by political belief, not by religious faith.
This means that the Muslims who support violence and terrorism are not the Muslims who are religiously devout, in fact, the two rarely have anything to do with one another, and the latter are usually opposed to the former. The report concludes that there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalization.
The agency added that some recruits are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. They therefore tend to be non-faithful individuals who are drawn to radical peer groups for political or personal but not religious reasons. Totemic societies are divided into clans based on the different totemic creatures each clan revered. In line with his argument that religious practice needs to be understood in sociological terms rather than supernatural terms, he noted that totemism existed to serve some very specific social functions.
For example, the sanctity of the objects venerated as totems infuse the clan with a sense of social solidarity because they bring people together and focus their attention on the shared practice of ritual worship. They function to divide the sacred from the profane thereby establishing a ritually reinforced structure of social rules and norms, they enforce the social cohesion of the clans through the shared belief in a transcendent power, and they protect members of the society from each other since they all become sacred as participants in the religion.
They create a collective consciousness and a focus for collective effervescence in society. In a religious context, this feeling is interpreted as a connection with divine presence, as being filled with the spirit of supernatural forces, but Durkheim argues that in reality it is the material force of society itself, which emerges whenever people come together and focus on a single object. As individuals actively engage in communal activities, their belief system gains plausibility and the cycle intensifies.
The fundamental principles that explain the most basic and ancient religions like totemism, also explain the persistence of religion in society as societies grow in scale and complexity. However, in modern societies where other institutions often provide the basic for social solidarity, social norms, collective representations, and collective effervescence, will religious belief and ritual persist?
In his structural-functional analysis of religion, Durkheim outlined three functions that religion still serves in society, which help to explain its ongoing existence in modern societies. First, religion ensures social cohesion through the creation of a shared consciousness form participation in rituals and belief systems. Second, it formally enforces social norms and expectations of behavior, which serve to ensure predictability and control of human action.
As long as the needs remain unsatisfied by other institutions in modern social systems, religion will exist to fill that void. He abandoned the idea of a religious or rabbinical career, however, and became very secular in his outlook. Religion performs the key function of providing social solidarity in a society.
This type of analysis became the basis of the functionalist perspective in sociology. He explained the existence and persistence of religion on the basis of the necessary function it performed in unifying society. His approach was to determine the meaning of religion in the conduct of life for members of society.
Three key themes concerning religion emerge from his work: the concept of theodicy, the disenchantment of the world, and the Protestant Ethic. They give meaning to why good or innocent people experience misfortune and suffering. Weber describes three dominant forms of theodicy in world religions: dualism , predestination and karma. Therefore believers must accept that there is a higher divine reason for their suffering and continue to strive to be good. Finally, the belief in karma , central to religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, explains suffering as a product of acts one committed in former lives.
Individuals must struggle in this life to rectify the evils accumulated from previous lives. In particular, he was interested in the development of the modern worldview which he equated with the widespread processes of rationalization : the general tendency of modern institutions and most areas of life to be transformed by the application of technical reason, precise calculation, and rational organization.
Again, central to his interpretivist framework, how people interpreted and saw the world provided the basis for an explanation of the types of social organization they created. In this regard, one of his central questions was to determine why rationalization emerged in the West and not the East. Eastern societies in China, India, and Persia had been in many respects more advanced culturally, scientifically and organizationally than Europe for most of world history, but had not taken the next step towards developing thoroughly modern, rationalized forms of organization and knowledge.
The relationship to religion formed a key part of his answer. One component of rationalization was the process Weber described as the disenchantment of the world , which refers to the elimination of a superstitious or magical relationship to nature and life.
Weber noted that many societies prevented processes of rationalization from occurring because of religious interdictions and restrictions against certain types of development.
A contemporary example might be the beliefs concerning the sacredness of human life, which serve to restrict experimenting with human stem cells or genetic manipulation of the human genome. For Weber, disenchantment was one source for the rapid development and power of Western society, but also a source of irretrievable loss. A second component of rationalization, particularly as it applies to the rise of capitalism as a highly rationalized economic system, was the formation of the Protestant Ethic.
This will be discussed more fully below. The key point to note here is that Weber makes the argument that a specific ethic or way of life that developed among a few Protestant sects on the basis of religious doctrine or belief, i. The restrictions that religions had imposed on economic activities and that had prevented them from being pursued in a purely rational, calculative manner, were challenged or subverted by the emergence and spread of new, equally religious, forms of belief and practice.
He noted that in modern industrial societies, business leaders and owners of capital, the higher grades of skilled labour, and the most technically and commercially trained personnel were overwhelmingly Protestant. He also noted the uneven development of capitalism in Europe, and in particular how capitalism developed first in those areas dominated by Protestant sects. As opposed to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church in which poverty was a virtue and labour simply a means for maintaining the individual and community, the Protestant sects began to see hard, continuous labour as a spiritual end in itself.
Hard labour was firstly an ascetic technique of worldly renunciation and a defense against temptations and distractions: the unclean life, sexual temptations, and religious doubts. Weber argued that the ethic , or way of life, that developed around these beliefs was a key factor in creating the conditions for both the accumulation of capital, as the goal of economic activity, and for the creation of an industrious and disciplined labour force.
It is an element of cultural belief that leads to social change rather than the concrete organization and class struggles of the economic structure. As the impediments toward rationalization were removed, organizations and institutions were restructured on the principle of maximum efficiency and specialization, while older, traditional i. The irony of the Protestant Ethic as one stage in this process is that the rationalization of capitalist business practices and organization of labour eventually dispensed with the religious goals of the ethic.
Phenomenology seeks to describe the way in which all phenomena, including religion, arise as perceptions within the immediate sensorial experience and awareness of individual subjects. Phenomenologists study the ways in which the world, and ourselves within it, first come to presence in experience and only later become separate objects, social structures or selves. Religion is only secondarily a structure, institution, practice, or set of beliefs.
How do humans go from the flux of immediate perception to a religious worldview? For Berger, religion is a particular type of culture Berger Like culture, it is a human creation that develops in response to the fundamental human condition: humans lack in-borne biological programming to help them cope with the problems of physical survival. Berger explains that, unlike other animals, human survival depends on creating cultural knowledges, techniques, and technologies, and passing them down from generation to generation.
In order for humans to survive, the world must be culturally prepared as a world in which things and people have stable meanings. Culture, Berger argues, exists therefore as an artifice that mediates between humans and nature and provides needed stability and predictability in human life. From the phenomenological point of view, culture enables both the ongoing creation of the world as a stable, objective social reality outside the subject and the simultaneous creation, or interiorization, of social roles and social expectations within the subject.
On the basis of the cultural processes objectification and interiorization, a stable, regular, predictable, taken for granted, reassuring world—or nomos i.
Religion develops because the stability of culture is inherently fragile. Just as the immediate experience of the individual is subject to flux and change, so is the foundation of the ordered, meaningful world of culture.
Cultural meanings tend to be fixed and rigid through time, whereas the underlying reality they describe is not. Events occur that are not explainable. They fall outside the categories and threaten to put the whole cultural framework or nomos into question. Religion comes into existence as a solution to this problem. Religion is able to resolve the threat of instability and terror of anomie by postulating a supernatural agency or cosmological view of the world, which are unaffected by everyday inconstancy and uncertainty.
In a religious cosmology the order described by culture is the natural order, that is, it is the way the gods have decided things must be. Things that occur that cannot be explained in human terms are explained as the products of divine will.
Religion is therefore a source of ultimate legitimation because it provides the social order with an unquestionable foundation of legitimacy: the way things are is the will of the gods.
From a phenomenological point of view however, the price of this religious solution is a mode of forgetfulness and alienation. For the legitimation effect of religion to work and be plausible, humans must forget that they themselves have created religion.
They must forget that religion is a human accomplishment. In The Sacred Canopy, Berger argued that the processes of secularization will eventually erode the plausibility of religious belief.
For religion to function as a sacred canopy and ultimate legitimation, it must provide the foundation for a shared belief system. In modern societies however, other types of knowledge and expert systems like science assume greater authority to describe the nature of the world and our role within it. Modern societies become more pluralistic as well, in the sense that a multiplicity of cultural and religious systems compete to provide meaning and orientation in peoples lives.
With the separation of church and state in the modern state system, religion has been increasingly seen as a matter of private, individual choice or a matter of private, family belief rather than the center of collective or public life. Therefore, because a pluralism undermines the ability of any single religion to offer an ultimate source of stability for society and because b the isolated, private beliefs of individuals cannot be the basis of a common shared cosmological order, religion will undergo a crisis in plausibility from which it is unlikely to recover.
As we will see below in Section Despite the dominant expectation that modern societies were becoming ever more secular, Stark believed that religion was, and would continue to be, an important and influential factor for individuals and society. Stark notes that church membership and new religious movements have actually increased in the United States as the country modernized. In Europe, where religious participation is relatively low, levels of individual belief nevertheless remain high and participation has not undergone a long-term decline Stark, b.
What explanation can be provided for the persistence of religion? Stark begins with the stipulation that the importance of the supernatural must be recognized when studying religion. Belief in a higher force or power is the feature that distinguishes religions from non-religious beliefs and organizations. Any theory of religion must take this into account.
Stark attempts to answer this question by proposing a number of basic, general rules about humans and their behavior. Rational choice theory states that the most basic human motive is individual self-interest, and that all social activities are a product of rational decision making in which individuals continuously weigh the benefits of choices against their costs Scott, A person who has a choice between two jobs, for example, would weigh the rewards of each one such as higher pay or better benefits against the possible costs of longer work hours or further commutes.
Individuals will on balance choose the course of action that maximizes their rewards and minimizes their costs. In this sense, even seemingly irrational decisions or beliefs can be understood as rational choices from the point of view of the individual decision maker Stark, a. Religious belief in the supernatural may seem irrational from an outside perspective because it involves an orientation to invisible, supernatural powers that affect the everyday material world through unobservable mechanisms.
However, for the religious believer whose worldview is shaped by this assumption, it is completely rational that they would choose to worship and make offerings to these supernatural powers in the hopes of gaining rewards and avoiding wrath or misfortune. Moreover, by participating in religious practice, people also surround themselves with other believers who make the rationality of supernatural choices even more plausible. According to Stark, the rewards people desire most intensely are often scarce or not available at all, such as an end to suffering or eternal life.
Consequently, when such rewards cannot be attained through direct means, humans will create and exchange compensators.
These are promises or IOUs of a reward at an unspecified future date, along with an explanation of how they can be acquired. Stark argues that rewards such as these are so monumental and scarce that they can only be provided through a supernatural source. This is why religious belief persists. In other words, a person must believe that a supernatural power exists which is capable of providing this reward in order to rationally believe that it is attainable.
In this sense, religious belief and practice are rational choices humans make to get the most coveted rewards regarding human existence. Religious organizations function to provide compensators for these rewards by claiming to provide access to supernatural powers or deities. For Stark, this is the root of why religion continues to exist in the modern world, and why it will continue to persist.
By using a positivist approach, Stark creates a theory where every proposition, including this one, can in principle be tested. The proposition above could be verified by examining the number of gods and their powers in the religions of small, traditional societies and comparing that to the number of gods worshipped in more established, modern ones. In reality however, many of the propositions are difficult to test because the concepts he uses are hard to measure or compare between religions.
How does one empirically quantify the scope of a certain god and compare it to that of an unrelated god from a different religion? His theory has also been critiqued for having an inherent bias towards monotheistic and particularly Protestant Christian measures of religion Carroll, In other words, he places higher value on measures of religiosity that fit the Protestant model, such as belief and adherence to doctrine, over those that better describe other religions, such as the ritual aspects of Hinduism or Catholicism.
His work may then implicitly suggest that Protestants are more religious than the others based on these skewed measures of religiousness. Feminist theories of religion analyze and critique the ways in which sacred texts and religious practices portray and subordinate—or empower—women, femininity, and female sexuality Zwissler, The crucial insight into religion that forms the basis for feminist research is the gendered nature of religion Erikson, Feminists therefore argue that questions about gender are essential for a meaningful analysis and explanation of religion.
In one line of inquiry, feminist theorists of religion have analyzed the representation of women within sacred religious texts, identifying and critiquing the way women are portrayed. For example, the gender of the deity is an issue for women, particularly in the monotheistic Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism Zwissler, God, within these religious beliefs, is usually understood as male.
The question this raises is whether religion is therefore the direct cause of misogyny —the aversion or distaste for people of the female sex, including belittling, sexual objectification, sexual violence, and discrimination against women—or whether male-dominated religious practices are the product of broader gendered inequalities and societal norms outside of religion Zwissler, ?
A second line of inquiry focuses on why power relationships within religious institutions are typically gendered Erikson, Feminist theorists note that women are frequently prevented from holding positions of power within religious practice.
Ministers, imams, rabbis, buddhas, and Brahmin priests are positions within religious hierarchies which have traditionally excluded women. Despite this, cross-culturally women are proportionately more religious than men. This can be seen as a paradox within feminist religious studies. Placed along two axes see Figure The challenges faced by women are different within each religion, and therefore the strategies women of faith use to change or work within their respective religion may vary.
Being an interdisciplinary perspective, feminism brings a diversity of voices into the discussion, illuminating important issues of inequality, oppression, and power imbalance, all of which are of great importance to the study of sociology. Through analysis of the gender structures within religious practices worldwide, a deeper understanding of how different cultures and traditions function is revealed.
The understanding that women frequently do not identify as being oppressed by their religion is an important insight in trying to fully understand the nature of gendered religious practice on a global scale. Religion has historically been a major impetus to social change. In early Europe, the translation of sacred texts into everyday, non-scholarly language empowered people to shape their religions.
Disagreements between religious groups and instances of religious persecution have led to mass resettlement, war, and even genocide. To some degree, the modern sovereign state system and international law might be seen as products of the conflict between religious beliefs as these were founded in Europe by the Treaty of Westphalia , which ended the Thirty Years War.
As outlined below, Canada is no stranger to religion as an agent of social change. Nevertheless debate continues in sociology concerning the nature of religion and social change particularly in three areas: secularization, religious diversity, and new religious movements.
Secularization refers to the decline of religiosity as a result of the modernization of society. This is a large increase from the , Canadians who claimed no religious affiliation in the Statistics Canada census Statistics Canada, Sociologists suggest that it is important to distinguish between three different types of secularization: societal secularization, organizational secularization, and individual secularization. The move to ordinate female ministers to reflect the growing gender equality in society or the use of commercial marketing techniques to attract congregations are examples.
Individual secularization is the decline in involvement in churches and denominations or the decline in belief and practice of individual members. As we saw earlier in the chapter, the equation of secularization with modernity has been the view of many important sociologists including Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.
But in more recent years there has been a growing number of sociologists who question the universality of the process of secularization and propose that contemporary society is going through a period of religious revitalization. Similarly, Fink and Stark have argued that Americans, at least, actually became more religious as American society modernized.
Even in Europe, where church attendance is very low, they suggest that religious practice is stable rather than in long term decline and that people still hold religious beliefs like the belief in God or life after death. However, Canada, like most of Europe, appears to be an exception to the trend of religious resurgence, meaning there has been less of an emergence of new and revived religious groups, as opposed to the U.
Prior to the s Canada was a more religious nation than the United States, now it is much less religious by any standard measure. Rather than a progressive and continuous process of secularization, Bibby argues that there have been three consecutive trends in Canada since the s: secularization, revitalization and polarization. After a period of steady secularization between the s and measured by levels of church attendance , Bibby presents evidence of revitalization in the s including small increases in weekly or monthly attendance for different age groups.
He also notes the four fold increase of non-Christians Muslims, Buddhists, Jews in Canada since the s, the high level of spiritual belief among people who do not attend church, the way that many people retain connections with churches for special occasions, and surveys that report that many would consider attending regularly if organizational or personal factors could be addressed.
Since the s, Bibby describes a third trend of polarization, with the public increasingly divided into opposite poles of the highly religious and the non-religious. Overall it can be said that understanding secularization and desecularization is an essential part of the sociological analysis of religion.
Knowing the relationship between modernity and religion provides insight into the complex dynamics of the late modern world and allows sociologists to predict what is to come for religion in the future. The question is whether secularization necessarily accompanies modernization or whether there is a cyclical process between secularization and religious revivalism. Are secular or non-secular societies the exceptions to the dominant trend of modern society?
In other words, in modern societies there is neither a steady one-way process of secularization nor a religious revitalization, but a growing diversity of belief systems and practices.
The practice of religion in Canada is ever changing and has recently become increasingly diverse. Religious diversity can be defined as a condition in which a multiplicity of religions and faiths co-exist in a given society Robinson, Because of religious diversity, many speculate that Canada is turning into a Post-Christian society , in the sense that Christianity has increasingly become just one among many religious beliefs, including the beliefs of a large number of people who claim no religion.
For those who report having a Christian heritage, only a minority can articulate the basic elements of Christian doctrine or read the bible on a regular basis. To an ever greater extent, Christianity no longer provides the basic moral foundation for Canadian values and practices.
Canada appears to moving towards a much more religiously plural society. This is not without its problems however. Religious diversity in Canada has accelerated in the last twenty years due to globalization and immigration. There were only a handful of members from the other main world religions. Other religions during this time such as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus only made up a negligible percentage of the population.
With the opening up of immigration to non-Europeans in the s, this began to change. In the 21st century, religion in Canada has become increasingly diverse. Including the various Protestant denominations Statistics Canada surveyed 80 different religious groups in Canada in Statistics Canada, Religious diversity does not only include the increased number of people who participate in non-Christian religions.
They consist of atheists, agnostics, and people who simply say they subscribe to no religion in particular Statistics Canada, During its first appearance, approximately four percent of the population in Canada identified as religiously unaffiliated. By , that number had increased nearly a quarter, rising to about 24 percent Pew Research Center, Canadians have had varying responses to religious diversity.
On an individual level, while many accept religious beliefs other than their own, others do not. Individuals are either open to embracing these differences or intolerant of the varying viewpoints surrounding them.
Wuthnow describes three types of individual response to religious diversity. Firstly there are those who fully embrace the religious practices of others, to the point of creating hybrid beliefs and practices. Christians might practice yoga or Eastern meditation techniques, for example. Secondly, there are those who tolerate other religions or accept the value of other religious beliefs while maintaining religious distinctions intact. This can manifest in the range of negative individual responses to Muslim women who wear a hijab or headscarf for example.
On a societal level, there are three main types of social response to religious diversity: exclusion, assimilation and pluralism.
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