Robert Bellah talks about civil religion – the belief that believing in ‘America’s God’ helps to unite the American people. He says that Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism and all other religions are unified in the USA by belief in America’s God. This God upholds American values such as democracy, capitalism, individualism and upward mobility. American civil religion includes supernatural beliefs; an example would be American currency which states ‘In God we trust’. US presidents swear on oath of allegiance before God and ‘God we trust’ ends US speeches.
Shils and Young explain the coronation in terms of how it legitimises core values and norms. They say that this is a ceremonial occasion which affirmed the moral values by which society lives by. The Queen confirms her promise to abide by the rules of society such as mercy, charity and justice. People around the country take part in the celebration; this equals solidarity and is like a religious or sacred act.
For functionalists religion is a positive action brought about by society seeking order; The Marxist perspective mirrors in some ways the functionalists take on religion. Marxist analysis of religion is rooted in the understanding of religion and social control. For Marxist religion is also a conservative force in society. However that conservative force is not a positive one for Marxists. Religion legitimises, reinforces and perpetuates the rule of the ruling class and their interests. Karl Marx’ famous quote states that religion is the ‘opium of the masses’ as it dulls the working class’ pain of exploitation. He claims that religion is a sedative, a narcotic, which dulls the people’s experience of sensitivity to and understanding of the difficulty of their life situation. This applies to the class who are alienated by their life of production under capitalist exploitation – the workers. For the owners of production and property, religion plays a different, but complementary role. It serves as a tool to control the proletariat by giving them false hopes such as promising future rewards, messianic hopes or a kind of religious fatalism. It also serves to help owners of production rationalise and justify their position of power and privilege. Religion under these circumstances appears to take on the character of an ideology. Such an ideology justifies and legitimises an unjust social order in such a way as to make it seem inevitable, pre-ordained and unchangeable. Religion promises some form of salvation or reward in some other life conditional upon complete acceptance of condition in this life, one’s place in it and the appointed places of other.
Another perspective on religion is the feminist one. Feminists argue that religion is a conservative force in society and prevents social change, allowing the ongoing dominance of the patriarchy and of male ideology within society, thus preventing women from fully achieving equal rights. This is not a desirable effect for feminists who say that women will not be equal while religion plays an important part in society as it promotes the male dominated existing social order.
However other sociologists argue that religion is a radical force in society, causing conflict, a lack of stability and change within the society which it is in operation in.
Weber argues that religion is a radical force in society – a force for change. Weber was a social action theorist and emphasised that meanings (beliefs) and motives direct human behaviour (action). Marx says that it is the economic system that shapes or determines religious belief, Weber agrees that while this might sometimes be the case the reverse could be true, i.e. religious beliefs can influence economic behaviour, therefore producing social change. He sets out this belief in his book, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. The key to understanding his work is the appreciation that his real concern was with the relationship between ideas and society. Like Marx, he believes that ideas are important, however it is not the ideas of the ruling class, but rather the religious ideas of Calvinism and how these affect people’s economic behaviour. According to the Calvinist belief system wealth and the accumulation of money and property was considered an outward manifestation of God’s favour and a sign that God had allocated a place in heaven for that person. The Calvinist belief system harboured a belief of pre-ordination within it, suggesting that the ‘elect’ have already been allocated their places in heaven and people do not have free will to make their own choices as their lives are predestined. This therefore created a great incentive to live sober, hard working and worthy lives, to be sure of their place in heaven – convince and prove to themselves that they are part of the ‘elect’ by becoming wealthy. Calvinism encouraged abstinence from pleasures of life and stipulated that money could not be wasted on personal luxuries and therefore the only channel for it was re-investment. Weber argued that many people in the industrial north of Europe were Calvinists and he concluded from this fact that the Calvinist belief system had had a massive economic impact (was a radical force) on society as it helped capitalism to start off.
Neo-Marxists dispute Karl Marx’s original position and agree with Weber in saying that religion can produce social change. Neo-Marxist Otto Madurron claimed that religion is not necessarily a functional, reproductive or conservative factor in society. It is often one of the main and sometimes the only available channel to bring about a social revolution. This claim is demonstrated by looking at; the Nationalist and Loyalist Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and the 1979 revolution in Iran when the Iranian royal family was deposed and Iran was turned into a strict Islamic fundamentalist state.
Neo-Marist interpretations of religion are interested in exploring the idea that religion can be used as a tool of resistance against class based oppression; Antonio Gramsci is an Italian sociologist who saw in his own country the power that the Catholic Church had over the people and how the church was generally subservient to the State and ruling class interests. However both Gramsci and Otto Madurron claimed that working class intellectuals could use loyalty to the church to put across the problems of the oppressed. e.g. in Poland before the fall of communism, Latin America and South America.
Madurron argues that most religions tend to take a traditional and conservative line but some churches have undergone significant internal reorganization which may fuel social change in wider society. For example, the hierarchy of most religions tends to be recruited from elite groups. However, when clergy are recruited from the subordinated class, conflict between bishops and clergy can lead to the emergence of a more radical religion. This seems to have been the case in relation to liberation theology in Latin America. It grew out of discontent with the first world idea that third world poverty could be ended by aid from wealthier nations. Liberation ideology is religious beliefs that the poor themselves should end their own impoverishment. The Vatican was concerned that Liberation theology analyses the condition of the poor in Marxist terms e.g. Father Comilo Torres, a Roman Catholic priest who encourages the Columbian poor to join in a revolution to change the conditions.
In conclusion, although the likes of Durkheim and Marx provide very good evidence of how Religion may act as a Conservative force, once you consider modern examples such as Islamic Fundamentalism and the apparent process of secularisation it seems that religion is maintaining nothing like Durkheim and Marx described. If Religion is maintaining anything then it seems to be conflict, can this be viewed as part of the conservative force?
