Religion

Questions of Religious Thought
1.
The sociological perspective is an immensely important lens with which to view various occurrences, phenomena, conceptualizations, and ideas. Essentially, it is a way of analyzing all of these factors and others in regards to their effect upon society. The sociological perspective is concerned with assessing the social repercussions of something, as well as its origination, in terms of how it impacts society. This perspective can acknowledge other facets of whatever it happens to be focused upon (such as religion), yet is predominantly concerned with the sociological roots of a particular concept and how it affects society.
The sociological perspective affects the way religion is studied in that it focuses on the social aspects of religion. Specifically, the sociological perspective tends to concentrate on certain behavioral aspects of religion. Writers such as Durkheim believe that there are other elements of religion other than just how it shapes the social order. However, he believes that the most significant facet of religion is the way it helps to reinforce—if not outright define—the social order itself (Durkheim, 1915). This notion of his is perhaps the quintessential expression of the sociological perspective in relation to religion. This perspective seeks to identify what exactly religion is doing to the social order, which has a lot to do with submission to authority.
The sociological perspective is considerably distinct from non-social scientific approaches to the study of religion such as philosophical or theological approaches, largely in that they consider social aspects of religion from a secondary or tertiary viewpoint. Religion’s social reverberations are always central to the sociological perspective. For example, theological perspectives stress the role of the creator or of a divinity much more than the sociological perspective does. The latter is aware of that role, yet subverts it—and most other things—to how society is impacted by religion
The sociological perspective is different from other social scientific approaches in that it is less focused on the individual, and the notion of individuality, as other approaches such as psychology and anthropology. The sociological lens is always one which is rooted in collectivism—the collective causes and effects of whatever is being studied, such as religion. This perspective considers religion (and most other things) in terms of social institutions. Non-social scientific perspectives are less focused on the collective social order, and more on individuality.
2.
At its most rudimentary level, religion is a social construct. This construct is largely comprised of codes, norms, rituals, and beliefs about how to function in accord with the predominant social values in a particular society. However, there is a strong spiritual aspect of religion, which is usually used as a means of interpreting the desires of some higher power or divinity. It is a fairly common conception that religion actually stems from the desires of that divinity to express his or her volition about how people should behave. However, a number of salient Western thinkers, including Durkheim, Marx and the Rational Choice theorists propound the notion that religion actually is a man-made social construct, and therefore actually comes from men.
Marx is particularly explicit in his espousal of this doctrine. He writes about the subject of religion indirectly in his work of literature entitled A Critique of the German Ideology. The preface of this tome contains a parable in which someone poses the notion that men are drowning because they are contemplating gravity, and if “they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept” (Marx, 2000) they could get rid of this idea. This quotation is not important because of the parable or the tenet of gravity, but rather because it reveals Marx’s true thoughts about religion. In this passage superstition is equated to a “religious concept”. Thus, Marx makes it clear that religion is little more than superstition. Superstition, of course, is a man made notion about rituals and practices which bring about some desired result. By choosing to compare religion to superstition in this passage, Marx is indicating that religion is both created by men (as is superstition), and is just a similar set of practices and rules for men to follow.
There is a fair amount of merit in Durkheim’s writings on this subject as well. Durkheim views religion almost exclusively within its social context, which he believes is essential to religion’s core function because “religion is something eminently social” (Durkheim, 1915). Although he acknowledges that some of the precepts upon which religion is based relate to spirituality or the will of some sort of higher power, Durkheim is predominantly concerned with the social ramifications of religion. The emphasis he places on its socializing capabilities, under which people regularly acknowledge and submit to some sort of authority, explicates his views about what religion is and from whence it came. His central notion is that “religion does not necessarily imply symbols and rites... Essentially, it is nothing other than a body of collective beliefs and practices endowed with a certain authority” (Durkheim, 1915). This passage indicates that religion is just a series of behavior guidelines for following authority. That authority is manmade, implying that religion actually came from men. Rational choice theorists would argue religion was founded by those who would get “utility payoffs” by having people submit to their authority (Danchev, 2016, p. 297).
3.
There is a whole host of reasons denoting exactly why religiosity has consistently proven difficult to measure. In most instances, measurements are taken quantitatively. Religiosity, quite frankly, is not necessarily an idea that lends itself to quantitative measurements. Moreover, the entire notion of religiosity is decidedly subjective. From a broad perspective, this term is defined as a preoccupation with, or overzealous appreciation for, religion in a maudlin way. It is difficult to ascertain what constitutes simply being religious or observing religion and what constitutes doing so in an overly sentimental fashion. There are not necessarily clear boundaries between one of these modes and the other. Furthermore, there is likely to be a wide amount of variation in what some people consider religious behavior and that to which others ascribe to religiosity. All of these reasons are responsible for religiosity typically being difficult to measure. as the stances or points of views of religious people towards subject matter which is not necessarily religious.
Partly because religiosity is difficult to measure, there is a multiplicity of ways in which sociologists attempt to do so. Some attempt to use surveys to gauge public reaction to phenomena which might involve religiosity. Thus, those who elicit extreme responses are who are more austere in their belief of religion’s role in that phenomena are issued different, quantitative levels of religiosity. For example, Borstorff and Arlington (2010) conducted such a survey for employees’ views of employers’ workplace policy regarding religious representations. The centrality of religiosity scale is another means by which sociologists attempt to measure religiosity. This scale is comprised of five distinct “theoretical defined core dimensions of religiosity” (Huber & Huber, 2012, p. 710). These dimensions include the “intellectual, the ideological, the ritualistic, the experiential, and the consequential” (Huber & Huber, 2012, p. 711). Each of these scales provides a separate measurement which informs the collective measurement of religiosity.
There are similar paradigms to the centrality of religiosity scale which have a degree of efficacy in measuring this notion. Pearce et al (2017) describe a variable model in which they also rely on five dimensions to measure religiosity: private practice, religious beliefs, religious salience, religious exclusivity, and external religiosity. This method involves some fairly sophisticated statistical measures to properly interpret this data and get an accurate measurement. There is another method for measuring religiosity which is based on a connotation that religiosity is akin to the viewpoint of religious people in regards to subjects which are not religious. This method involves largely contrasting immanence orientation with religious fundamentalism—since these two concepts are antipodal to one another (Strauss and Sawyerr, 2009, p. 2626). By utilizing a survey mechanism, one can gauge public opinion about certain issues such as homosexuality to determine whether or not their views actually invoke religiosity.
The most accurate method is the centrality of religiosity scale because it pulls from a variety of different dimensions which inform religiosity, and yields tangible, quantitatively empirical evidence.
References
Borstorff, P., Arlington, K. (2010). The Perils of Religious Accommodation: Employees’ Perceptions. Proceedings of the Academy of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 14 (1), 1-6.
Danchev, S. (2016). Was Bentham a primitive rational choice theory predecessor? European Journal of History of Economic Thought. 23(2), 297-322.
Durkheim, E. (1915). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. http://www.gutenberg.org/ Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41360/41360-h/41360-h.htm#Page_1
Huber, S., Huber, O. (2012). The centrality of religiosity scale. Religions. 3, 710-724.
Marx, K. (2000). A Critique of The German Ideology. https://www.marxists.org Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf
Pearce, L.D., Hayward, G.M., Pearlman, J.A. (2017). Measuring five dimensions of religiosity across adolescence. Review of Religious Research. 59(3), 367-393.
Strauss, J.P., Sawyerr, O.O. (2009). Religiosity and Attitudes Towards Diversity: A Potential Workplace Conflict? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39 (11) 2626-2650.