Hamilton found that in Italy people directed their prayers at statues of the saints, if the people had been praying for pro-longed periods of time without having their prayers answered the statues were tipped on their heads and whipped. The same goes for football, if a player scores a winning goal he is considered a God, if he misses a winning shot then he is immediately shot down. This in effect shows that people tailor their ‘religion’ to suit their needs, showing respect and admiration only where they see fit. The Saints didn’t answer their prayers so they are punished even though they’re considered sacred and superior.
Malinowski (1954) studied the Trobriand Islanders. The Trobriand Islanders prayed to and worshipped the sea, in other words if bad things happened people begged the sea for mercy and if something good happened they praised the sea for its kindness, and accept this for the simple reason that ‘that’s just the way things are’. He found that religion played a big role in promoting social solidarity in times of emotional need and stress, eg, weddings, funerals, engagements. Basically he’s trying to say that religion acts as the foundation of a culture, a supporting structure you could say that keeps everything working the way it should be.
Parsons (1965) followed on from Malinowski to say that religion is our source of meaning, how we answer the difficult questions such as, ‘why do people die?’, it’s a way for us to forget our problems and load them on somebody else’s shoulders, for example, God’s shoulders. If this is the case, why are there so many people out there still ‘searching for the truth’ when it’s right ‘under their noses’.
Bellah believes that it is an ‘overarching civil religion’, that unites people, eg, American people and their faith in God and their country. Americanism goes hand in hand with God. Americans tend to be very patriotic so it can be said that it is their faith in the power of their country that drives them, God is merely an afterthought. America is so large and diverse that there are many religions co-existing in the country, not all of them involve one God.
Beckford (2003) went on to verify and criticise Bellah’s findings. Beckford agrees that on some occasions eg. Diana’s funeral (1997), Queen\s golden jubilee (2002), civil religions draw a nation together, he then went on to say that it’s doubtful that these few occasions can compensate, if a country has a civil religion it’s usually occasional and very weak.
Marxists describe religion as a way of controlling people, chains to hold people down, distorting their reality, promising rewards in the after-life and hope in this one. Basically a set of chains to hold man down, to dominate and oppress man, keeping any social change from happening. They believe that someone who is truly liberated has no need for religion. That ‘Man makes religion, religion does not make man, in other words religion is the self-consciousness and slef feeling of man who has either not yet found himself, or has already lost himself again.’ (Marx). This makes sense when the growing amount of religions over the past few decades are taken into consideration.
As you can see, there are many ways to look at religion, all with points that make sense and points that don’t. Religions differ from place to place, culture to culture, many have similarities, but, overall, they’re not the same. Besides, when looking into religion from a sociological perspective, one answer brings about more questions, this creates criticism for that definition. Because so many perspectives attempt to give a religion a ‘personalised’ definition they find themselves overlapping, all with a point or no point at all, or maybe a combined point, it depends on how devoted to their perspectives the sociologists attempting to give the definition are. In other words, Marxism, Functionalism, etc, the actual sociological perspectives of each group in society reflects their perspectives on religion, and as they all have different view points and opinions, they cannot agree.
