RELIGION AND SOCIETY

Religion is recognized as one of the society’s important institutions. It plays a very significant role in the lives of people.

It is a system of beliefs and practices shared by a group of people that helps them explain the functions in the present world using the concepts of the super natural and sacred.

Religion comes from the latin word religare which means “to bind together” the bond between God and man.

ACCORDING TO JOHN CUBER

Religion is a culturally entrenched pattern of behavior composed of sacred beliefs, emotional feelings accompanying the beliefs and overt conduct implementing the beliefs and feelings.

THIS CONCEPT EMBODIES THE FOLLOWING

1.  Sacred beliefs

2.  Emotional feelings accompanying the beliefs and feelings.

3.  Overt conduct implementing the beliefs and feelings.

DURKHEIM IN HIS CLASSIC STUDY

The elementary forms of religious life,  defines religions as” a unified system of belief and practices related to sacred things.

Religions symbols and meanings shape the world views, thoughts and beliefs of their adherents.

ACCORDING TO DURKHEIM

 All religion divide the uncourse into the emitonally exclusive category

. THE PROFANE

 means the empirically that transcend hings, those that are knowledgeable through common , everyday experiences.

. THE SACRED  

   Those experiences that transcend everyday existence, it is extra ordinary powerful potentially dangerous, and we inspiring.

ELEMENTS OF RELIGION

.RITUAL AND PRAYER
.EMOTION

.BELIEF

.ORGANIZATION

RITUAL AND PRAYER
   refers to the formalized social rituals possessed by all religious.

EMOTION

  One of the functions of ritual and prayer is to produce in appropriate emotional state. This consciousness may even be resorted to

BELIEF

Basic to every religion are beliefs concerning the nature of the universe and man in relation to it.

Belief system of different religions vary widely.

1.  Numerous Christian sects practice the laying on of hands whereby a header channels divine energy “into afflicted people and thus heals.

2.  Some Christians also believe in the power  of relics to work miracles simply because these objects were once associated with Jesus, or the Saints.

3.  In some religious, the source of the valued quality is a personalized deity. In others, it is the reservoir of supernatural force that is tapped.

ORGANIZATION
All most all religions adopt on organized structure through which specialist can be recruited and traine, religious meeting conducted, and interaction facilitated between society and the member of the religion.

THE UNIVERALITY OF RELIGION

.Religious beliefs are evident in all known contemporary cultures.

.Sculptures of female with ample secondary sex characteristics which may have been fertility charms.

.Anthropologists have theorized that early human thought their hunting could be made more successful if they drew images depicting good fortune in hunting.

. The existence of prehistoric religion may be assumed.

.Most of these theories seem to full into three groups:

1.  The psychological

2.   The sociological

3.  The mixture of the two.

TECHNIQUES OF RELIGION

This simply means that the people act in ways which they deem morally and socially right according to the requirements of their beliefs.

Some of these religious techniques are identified by spiritu as the following:

1 prayer

2 sacrifies

3 Reverence

4 Divination

5 Taboo

6 Rituals

7 Seremony

8 Magic

VARIATIONS IN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

Anthropologists and other scholars have not come up with common reasons why people need religion, or how they first came to invent spirit, gods, and other supernatural beings and forces.

To many people, there are at least two types of super natural:

1 Supernatural forces

. such as mana, which is thought to inhabit some objects but not others.

2 Supernatural beings

. this  fall under or within two broad categories

A. Those of non-human origin like gods and spirit

B. Those human origin such as ghost, and ancestral spirit.

BEHAVIOR BELIEVED TO AFFECT THE SUPER NATURAL

Wallace suggested twelve types of activities used in religions over the world. These are

1 Prayers

2 Music

3 Physiological  experiences

4 Exhoration or preaching

5 Reciting the code

6 Simulation

7 Mana or taboo

8 Eeast

9 Sacrifices

The Greek’s arrangement for the sacrifices served two purposes:

A offering for the gods

B feast for the people

10 Congregation

11 Inspirations

12 symbolism

MAGIC AND RELIGION

 All the modes of the interacting with the supernatural can be recognized in variousways.

SORCERY AND WITCHCRAFT

 Sorcery and witchcraft are attempts to invoke the spirit to work harm against people.

- Sorcery involves the used of materials, objects and medicines to invoke the supernatural

- other societies have secret part time specialist called sorcerers.

FUNCTION OF RELIGION

 Religion and individuals. The language, imagery and meaning that constitute a religious belief system provide people with shared ways of viewing the world.

1.  In the midst of problems in life, the individual may turn to God

2.  Religion helps the individual to understand the meaning of his life.

3.  The beliefs and rituals surrounding such important events in life as birth, puberty, marriage, and death.

4.  Religion helps the individual integrate his personality.

5.  Religion helps the individual form his concept of the world and the relationship between man and the universe.

6.  Religion also serves as a social marker. It operate like ethnicity or race.

7.  The individual finds himself deeply involved in religious activities.

-      Religiosity refers to the level of involvement in religious activities.

8.  To some individuals, their religion is a source of status symbols in the society.

RELIGION AND SOCIETY as a major social institution, religion performs a number of functions in the society. Some of these are the following:

1.  In many societies, religious values predominate in the family and political and educational institution.

2.  Religious organization seeks to make the moral  and social orders more similar.

3.  The religious organizations need to recruit and socialize members.

4.  Religion promotes social solidarity in the community by acting as a kind of social cement.

5.  Religions offer codes of conduct, thereby reinforcing the moral order in the society.

6.  Religion helps to legitimize the stablished and dominant groups within a society.

7.  Through participation in religious practices people easily adapt to a new environment.

8.  Religion provides the interpretation of different events in a give society.

9.  Religious institution serve as sources of international contacts.

10.      Religion serves to unify the social system in the society.

11.      Religion provides guidance and becomes a means of social control.

12.      Religion performs welfare and recreational function, and addition to meeting spiritual needs.

ORGANIZATION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE

Some of these are the following:

.Church

.Universal Church

.Ecclesia

.The denomination

.The sect

.A religious movement

. The millenarian movements

.The cult

SECULARIZATION, SECTS, AND CULTS

Secularization : refers to the erosion of belief in the supernatural and associated with modernization and industrialization.

SECTS: is a usually a small, demanding and intense religious group.

FUNDAMENTALISM : formed in an effort to get back to the more basic.

EVANGELICALISM:  see themselves as more moderate religiously and politically than either fundamentalists or secularists.

CULTS: Do not claim cultural continuity with existing churches and religious traditions.