This perspective focuses on the ways in which individuals interpret their religious experiences. Feminist theorists focus on gender inequality and promote leadership roles for women in religion. Religious Influence in Society. Religion is a social institution, because it includes beliefs and practices that serve the needs of society. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Ten Commandments are perhaps the most famous set of rules for moral behavior. The pay, working conditions, and robotic nature of the tasks dehumanizes the workers and strips them of incentives for doing quality work. Religious beliefs are specific ideas members of a particular faith hold to be true, such as that Jesus Christ was the son of God, or that reincarnation exists. Sociology by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. An early 20th-century philosopher spoke of the impending decline of the West. Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. Durkheim, Émile. (Ed.). Given these estimates, the number of children who were abused probably runs into the thousands. Finally, religion promotes social control: It reinforces social norms such as appropriate styles of dress, following the law, and regulating sexual behavior. Religion has all of these benefits, but, according to conflict theory, it can also reinforce and promote social inequality and social conflict. Religion serves several functions for society. Symbolic interactionists study the ways in which people practice their faith and interact in houses of worship and other religious settings, and they study how and why religious faith and practice have positive consequences for individual psychological and physical well-being. For example, it emphasizes that beliefs and practices are not sacred unless people regard them as such. This view is partly inspired by the work of Karl Marx, who said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” (Marx, 1964). The McDonaldization of Society. From the Latin religio (respect for what is sacred) and religare (to bind, in the sense of an obligation), the term religion describes various systems of belief and practice concerning what people determine to be sacred or spiritual (Durkheim 1915; Fasching and deChant 2001). For instance, in every culture, funeral rites are practiced in some way, although these customs vary between cultures and within religious affiliations. First, it gives people a common set of beliefs and thus is an important agent of socialization (see Chapter 4 “Socialization”). (1998, September–October). Besides the family, religion is one of the largest social institutions that sociologists study. Considerable research has emerged over the past five decades that demonstrates the benefits of religious practice for society. Because interactionists study one-on-one, everyday interactions between individuals, a scholar using this approach might ask questions focused on this dynamic. News reports going back since the 1990s indicate a final problem that religion can cause, and that is sexual abuse, at least in the Catholic Church. While some people think of religion as something individual because religious beliefs can be highly personal, religion is also a social institution. As the Puritans’ persecution of non-Puritans illustrates, religion can also promote social conflict, and the history of the world shows that individual people and whole communities and nations are quite ready to persecute, kill, and go to war over religious differences. To study and understand society: functionalism, conflict theory, and interactionism all valuable... 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