---

There are a number of possible relationships between religion, social change and social stability. Functionalist and many Marxist and feminist sociologists argue that religion may be a conservative force, a factor that inhibits social change. By contrast, religion may also be a radical force that promotes change.

---

Table of contents

1. Religion as a conservative force
2. Religion as a force that promotes change

---

Religion as a conservative force

• ‘Conservative force’ is usually used to refer to religion as preventing change and maintaining the status quo. Functionalists, Marxists and feminists generally agree that religion acts as a conservative force in society.

• Functionalists claim that religion contributes to a sense of collective identity and value consensus; it helps bind people together in support for the existing social order.
  • Durkheim studied Totemism among Australian Aboriginal clans in which the sacred totem represented different clans. In worshipping God, people also worship society. The worship of society strengthens the values and moral beliefs that form the basis of social life. It makes it easier for a person to visualise and direct his feelings of awe towards a symbol than towards so complex a thing as a clan. Religion thus strengthens unity and promotes social solidarity. Collective worship (e.g. drama, religious rituals) allows individuals to express their faith in shared values and beliefs, which strengthen the integration of society is strengthened. Members of society thus understand the moral bonds unite them.
    • Religion acts as a constraining (conservative) force: through religious worship (ceremonies) the ‘collective conscience’ is imprinted on the individual: they literally ‘feel’ the weight of the community on them.Thus, religious worship is the worship of the social group or the society.
  • Parsons argues that the cultural system provides guidelines for human’s actions in terms of beliefs, values. Religion is part of the cultural system. In a Christian society the Ten Commandments “Thou shalt not kill” integrates diverse norms as the way to drive a car, settle an argument and deal with the suffering of the aged. The norms that direct these areas of behaviour prohibit manslaughter, murder and euthanasia. By establishing general principles and moral beliefs, religion helps to provide the consensus that Parsons believes is necessary for order and stability in society.
  • [Evaluation] Glock and Start criticised functionalists that the history of Chrisianity manifests the great power of religion not merely to bind but to divide.
  • [Evaluation] Not all functionalists agree that the main role of religion is to create social solidarity.Some, like Malinowski, emphasise the role of religion in supporting individual needs (for example, helping people cope with life crises).

• Marxist sociologists argue that religion is a form of ideology that deters the working class from rising up and overthrowing the capitalist economic system. Religion makes people passive and disinterested in radical social change.
  • Marx argues that “the opium of the people” stupefies the adherents and dull their pain from suffering rather than bringing them fulfilment and happiness. Religion can dull the pain of oppression: promises a paradise of eternal bliss in life after death; makes poverty more tolerable by offering a reward for suffering and promising compensation for injustice in the afterlife; offers the hope of supernatural intervention to solve problems on earth; justify the social order and social hierarchial structure such as from the Victoria hymm, ‘God made them highly and lowly’, which make stratification system to be accepted, as social inequalities seem to be ‘God’s will’ thus unchangeable
    • For example, the caste system of traditional India was justified by Hindu religious beliefs
    • In the ancient Egyptian belief, Pharaohs were both men and gods at the same time.
  • Religion does not only ameliorate the sufferings of life, it also effectively creates false consciousness.Marx believed that the ‘objective’ truth was that the proletariat (i.e. most people) suffer deprivations because of their exploitation by the Bourgeois (extraction of surplus value empowers the minority Bourgeois class and leaves the majority of the proletariat with insufficient money to lead a decent quality of life), however, people fail to realise this because religion teaches them that all of the misery in life is God’s will.
  • Bruce suggests that USA republican politicians enjoyed ‘The New Christian Right’, which supports a more agressive anti-communist foreign policy, more military spending, less weldare spending, more deregulation policies, defends the interests of the rich and the ideologies such as the pursuit of materialism. When George Bush in 2004 was elected, an exit poll found that two thirds of voters who attended church more than once a week had voted for him. While it might be debatable how successful the religious right in the USA are in getting their candidates elected to political power, what does seem clear is that they do tend to support more economically powerful sectors of the political elite, suggesting support for the Marxist view of religion.
  • [Evaluation] Many traditional Marxists ignore the fact that religion can act as a form of resistance to the powerful, and as an agent of social change. In South America in the 1960s and 1970s, Roman Catholic priests who are called Liberation Theology played major roles in fighting against political dictatorships and poverty. Liberation Theology sought to present an image of Christ portrayed more as a reforming revolutionary than the passive peacemaker presented in mainstream Catholicism. This shows how religion can act as what Gramsci calls a ‘counter-hegemony’ in showing oppressed peoples alternative ways of organizing societies.

Conclusion

• McGuire suggests whether religion is a change-promoting or a change-inhibiting force depends on the importance of religion.
  • The greater the importance of religion, the greater its potential to participate in generating change.
    • In countries where religious beliefs are central to the culture (e.g.Latin America), anyone wishing to produce change tends to use religion to justify their actions.
    • In Britain, however, religion plays a less central role in society’s culture, so it tends to have a lesser role in legitimising social change.

Religion as a force that promotes change

• Although shared religious beliefs might integrate a social group, those same beliefs may have repercussions which in the long term can produce changes in society
  • Weber argued that the values of Calvinism gave rise, over a couple of centuries, to the economic system of capitalism. Calvinism taught that working hard was a way to worship God and also to ‘prove’ that they were one of the ‘elect’(those chosen to go to heaven before they were born). It also taught that having fun was sinful. These two religious beliefs together encouraged the development of societies with cultures which valued hard work and entrepreneurialism, and discouraged frivolous expenditure. Eventually, this led to any money saved from setting up businesses to be put back into the business encourage more ‘work’ and ‘industry’. These were the exact same set of values which were necessary for Capitalism to work – the work ethic and entrepeneurialism. Therefore, Calvinist Protestantism produce social change for the development of capitalist.
  • There are also other progressive social change.
    • In the USA (in the 1960s) the Reverend Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Council played a leading role in establishing civil rights and securing legislation intended to reduce racial discrimination.
    • In South Africa, Archbishop Tutu was a prominent opponent of apartheid.
  • [Evaluation] Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary and parts of Netherland all contained large Calvinist populations, but none of them became one of the first capitalist countries. However, Marshall criticises it and argues that Weber does not state that religion is the only factor that can lead to the rise in capitalism.

• Social change such as emergence of capitalist is progressive, whereas it could also be reactionary.
  • This often occurs when there is a revival in fundamentalist religious beliefs withih such as Christianity or Islam, involving a return to original beliefs of a religion. If fundamentalists are successful, they succeed in defending traditional values, but at the same time they change society by reversing innovations that have taken place.
  • In the USA, conservative evangelical Protestants try to influence government and return to what they see as traditional Christian values in America life and in 2014, 25% of US adults are identified with evangelical Protestants. According to CBS News poll, Donald Trump who is a Republican candiate gained 80% of White evangelical vote who promotes curbing abortion rights, expanding religious liberty and etc. Giddens and Sutton suggest that Evangelical organisations are effective in mobilising resources to help achieve their religious and political objective. Thus, the conservative evangelicalism, a large proportion of a nation’s citizens, could promote social change backwards to the values they insists, such as through political votes.
  • In Iran in 1979, under the last ruler of Iran, society was changes by the influx of western ideas and music, such as liberalisation of traditional attitudes to women. This was resented as the West was blamed for rich elite deriving wealth from oil industry and causing poverty and declinie of Islam. They became to reject the Western ideas and a return to truly Islamic society based on Qur’an. Giddens and Sutton suggest that the Islamic republic sought to Islamise the state, making women wear a veil, baning western music and alcohol, closing nightclubs. Thus, fundementalist religious beliefs contributed to revolutionary changes in Iranian society through challenging change-promoting force, which promotes social change.
  • The Taliban regime in Afghanistan during the 1990s set up possibly the most extreme form of religious regime ever witnessed, based on an extremey harsh interpretation of the Koran.  Women were forced to dress themselves head to foot in traditional dress to hide their identity, men were forced to grow beards, children were forbidden to fly kites, all music was banned, and people were forbidden to own any pictoral representation of any living being.  Harsh punishments such as amputation for theft, beatings for not wearing traditional dress, and executions for adultery were common.  Girls were forbidden from receiving any education after the age of eight, and all women were excluded from employment, even widows.
  • [Evaluation] Fundamentalists movements might not aim to promote social change, rather, they might aim to  prevent social change.
  • [Evaluation] Almond et al. admit that fundamentalism will only thrive when the right combination of structural factors, chance factors and leadership comes together at a specific place and time.