Another function is that religion provides meaning that we are here to act out gods plan, and venerable people believe this gives these venerable people strength in society.
The last function is that functionalists generally see religion as a good thing as it creates social solidarity and strengthens collective conscience, he believed that religion promotes this social solidarity by dealing with the situations of emotional stress that threaten the stability of society. Durkheim study of the aborigines can be evidence of this as he found that the members of this community worshipped sacred objects even though they had no supernatural characteristics. However, Durkheim is criticized for this as he only studied a small number of aboriginal groups therefore it may be misleading to generalise about aboriginal beliefs from this sample, never mind the religion as a whole.
In worshipping these totems individuals of society gain a collective consciousness, sharing norms and values and creating consensus. Durkheim believed that by worshipping god, people were actually worshipping society. Society is more important and more powerful than the individual, just as God is. However, He has also been criticized for misunderstanding both totemism and the behaviour of the aboriginal tribes themselves.
An example of a clan in today’s society can be Islam’s and that no matter what they are doing or where they are, they have to prayer at a certain time of day.
Functionalist, Malinowski similar to Durkheim argues that religion’s role in society is to provide support for society’s members in times of crisis. In explaining death and providing support during natural disasters it makes sure that people don’t reject the shared norms and values of society due to perceived hardship. Most societies have evolved religious rites of passage ceremonies in order to minimize the social disruption, for example the death of a loved one can cause the bereaved to feel helpless and alone, unable to cope with life. However, the funeral ceremony allows people to adjust to their new situation. To provide evidence for this Malinowski used date from small-scale, non-literate societies to support he’s ideas- the Trobiand islands. He found that this clan used religion to help with uncertainty in their life’s, because when the people went out to fishing the rivers were dangerous, they wouldn’t be sure on whether their people would return or not, therefore this was a time of uncertainty for them. So as a result they would perform rituals this was their way of praying that their people would return from the rivers. By doing these rituals it binds people together and also deals with stress because knowing these rituals have taken place they feel safe and secure. In today’s society, people will pray even though if they are not religious, for example if a part of someone’s family was ill they would pray to make them feel better and more secure. However, in some cases people will argue that Malinowski exaggerated the importance of religious ritual in helping people to cope with the situations of stress and uncertainty.
Functionalists such as Parsons argue that a role/function of religion is to act as a regulatory force. Each religion has a code of laws that ‘must be obeyed’ in order to receive an after life, or to go to heaven. The Ten Commandments for example, people believe that if they follow these set of rules that there will be an afterlife for them. Therefore religion is seen to control us.
Merton (1957) says that in religion you have both functions and dysfunctions, because not everything in society is positive, it can be dangerous. He explained that the functions are things like the role in society, things like socialisation, value and moral consensus. Whereas, the dysfunctions are the negative side of things like war, terrorism, psychological control etc. which then makes a difference between the manifest and latent functions. Manifest are the intended things in society for example, at a funeral the expected thing to do is grieve that loved one however, the latent functions would be the not intended things at a funeral for example, moving on and celebrating the life of the loved one.
However, functionalist have been criticised for only focusing on the positive aspects of religion rather than any dysfunctional aspects. For example, rather than binding people together, many of the world’s conflicts have been caused by religion for example, as with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and Hindus and Muslims in India.
Church attendance is declining in most western societies, such as the UK. Therefore for some people it is difficult to see how religion can be functioning to socialize the majority of society’s members into morality and social integration, if only a minority of people regularly attend church.
