SOC 422/RELS 404: Religion, Culture & Society
University of Idaho

Professor: John Mihelich, Ph.D.
Office: Phinney 401
Office Phone: 885-5046
Office Hours: W 2:00-4:00 p.m. & TTh 8:30-10:30 a.m.
Or by appointment
Email: jmihelic@uidaho.edu

                                            Course Mentor: Mary Crowell crow4815@vandals.uidaho.edu

                            

“As inevitable change takes place in social systems, religions that responded to the needs and conditions in conceptual forms suited to one historical epoch become less effective in addressing core problems of human experience. Death is one example. The problem does not go away. The death rate is the same: one per person.  Hence, the need for a solution remains…Because existential questions are perennial and their solutions lie beyond rational determination, religious answers will always have a place in human experience” 
              -Swatos and Christiano 1999: 216-17.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

What is religion?  How are religion and religiosity shaped by (and how do they, in turn, shape) culture, society and experience today in the United States and globally?  What are the dominant patterns of contemporary religiosity and how do sociologists make sense of them?  How are we to understand religious diversity?  How do young adults engage in and make sense of religion?  These and other “big” questions frame the learning process in this course. Throughout history religion has been one of the most pervasive features of human culture, social organization and experience. However, the cultural forms of religious belief and practice have been and are extremely diverse, and the way that religion has influenced individual lives and collective social life has and does vary widely.  Furthermore, religion itself is always, in significant respects, socially constructed in that its content and structure are formed from and within a particular socio-cultural context. Religion exists, is shaped by and shapes its social context.  In the "modern," and what has been called the "post-modern" era, continuing debates continue, in sociology as well as in other arenas, about the contemporary forms and relevance of religion, and various predictions and assessments abound concerning its current and future conditions, its rejuvenation and/or change, and its possible ultimate demise as a social phenomenon and as a significant aspect of individual lives.  This course cultivates and renders relevant a sociological analysis of religion as it begins, and ends, with the question: To what degree and in what manner do young adults engage with phenomena labeled “religion” in the United States, and elsewhere, today? Drawing primarily from sociological perspectives, this course will provide students with an opportunity to think about religious experience and religious organizations as part of a larger social order.  The primary focus of this course is on sociological theory of religion, the historical cultural and social forces that have shaped the context for contemporary religion, and current patterns and conditions of religiosity in the contemporary United States, but the course will also draw from other disciplinary and popular perspectives.  The course will integrate theoretical readings, historical analyses, ethnographic description and interpretation, and student projects.  Throughout the course, a sociological imagination will be cultivated and exercised to understand the nature of religious belief and the social significance of its organization and change.

Most people tend to have strong feelings about religion.  While students will be encouraged to share their thoughts, experience, and insights about religion in this course, they also will be will be expected to temporarily “suspend subjectivity” and employ both a sociological imagination and critical thinking in examining their own religious beliefs and practices, as well as those of others, and in analyzing the role of religion in society.  Critical thinking does not mean criticism, it refers to a mode of information gathering, analysis, and evaluation and entails a degree of objectivity and openness of mind.

REQUIRED TEXT AND READINGS:

Roof, Wade Clark. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Selected Readings. (to be announced and on "Reading List")

“The construction of meaning is basic to humanity, and the cold rationalism of naturalistic philosophies can rarely be satisfactory in this endeavor” (Jindra, Michael. 2003. Natural/Supernatural Conceptions in Western Cultural Contexts.  Anthropological Forum 13(2): 165).

“What remain—always to be reflected on—is the existential questions which confront all cultures in the demand for meanings”
              --Daniel Bell, 1977. The Return of the Sacred? The Argument on
                 the Future of Religion.  British Journal of Sociology 28(4): 441.

 “The ground of religion is existential: the awareness of men of their finiteness and the inexorable limits to their powers, and the consequent effort to find a coherent answer to reconcile them to that human condition” 
              --Daniel Bell, 1977: 447.

“The late twentieth century may well be in some respects a formative religious period in history.” (Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace, 1999: 76)

"Contemporary sociological theorists…have recognized the need for guiding transcendent meanings in modern society.  While these scholars’ theories of modernity differ in important ways, they agree on two fundamental ideas.  First, there is a crisis of meaning in modern society…Second, modernity does not have to be this way.” (Kelly Besecke, Speaking of Meaning In Modernity, 366-7).

“In any religion, explaining the physical world is only a subordinate task; it is explaining the social world, giving it meaning and moral value, which is religion’s primary concern…We must see religion not simply as a set of doctrines or beliefs, however constituted, but as a system for understanding and constructing te self and the community.” (Buckser 1996, Beyond Secularization Theory, 439-40)

A final quote: 

“It is not mere business astuteness (51)…it is an ethos…The earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life…is thought of so purely as an end in itself…Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.  Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs.  This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naïve point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence…The capitalist economy of the present day is a immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live…[and] conform to capitalistic rules of action…[but] it had to originate somewhere…the spirit of capitalism…was present before the capitalistic order…[it] had to fight its way to supremacy…a state of mind such as that expressed [in the spirit of capitalism] would both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages have been proscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as an attitude entirely lacking in self-respect…the difference does not lie in the degree of development of any impulse to make money…at all periods of history, wherever it was possible, there has been ruthless acquisition, bound to no ethical norms whatever…Capitalistic acquisition as an adventure has been at home in all types of economic society which have known trade with the use of money…but only tolerated as fact…How could activity, which was at best ethically tolerated, turn into a calling? (74)…that anyone should be able to make it the sole purpose of his life-work, to sink into the grave weighted down with a great material load of money and goods, seems…explicable only as the product of a perverse instinct…But…modern capitalism has become dominant…[perhaps because of its] alliance with religious forces (73)…[through which it became] considered the essence of moral conduct, even commanded in the name of duty (75)…[the religious ideas]…gave the way of life of the new entrepreneur its ethical foundation and justification (75)…  
                --Max Weber 1996[1930]. The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of
                  Capitalism, pp. 51-75.  LA: Roxbury Publishing Company.