Question

Apply the functionalist perspective and discuss how religions/belief systems like Christianity and/or Islam allow societies to function

Answer 1

• The structural-functional approach to religion has its roots in Emile Durkheim’s work on religion. Durkheim argued that religion is, in a sense, the celebration and even (self-) worship of human society.
• Given this approach, Durkheim proposed that religion has three major functions in society: it provides social cohesion to help maintain social solidarity through shared rituals and beliefs, social control to enforce religious-based morals and norms to help maintain conformity and control in society, and it offers meaning and purpose to answer any existential questions.
• Further, Durkheim placed himself in the positivist tradition, meaning that he thought of his study of society as dispassionate and scientific. He was deeply interested in the problem of what held complex modern societies together. Religion, he argued, was an expression of social cohesion.
• In the functionalist view, religious rituals express the spiritual convictions of the members of the religion and help increase the belongingness of the individuals to the group. Examples of such religious rituals include Christians' pilgrimages to the holy land or Muslims' pilgrimages to Mecca. Religious rituals occur in smaller ways as well.
• For example, the daily prayers and cleansing rituals of Islam or the forms and rites of Sunday morning worship in Christian churches serve to unite those who enter into the forms and rituals and separate them from others who do not. According to Durkheim, these reminders of religious belongingness create, express, and reinforce the cohesion of a social group.
• Religion is very real; it is an expression of society itself, and indeed, there is no society that does not have religion. We perceive as individuals a force greater than ourselves and give that perception a supernatural face.
• We then express ourselves religiously in groups, which for Durkheim makes the symbolic power greater.Which ever religion you follow whether its Christianity or Islam is an expression of our collective consciousness, which is the fusion of all of our individual consciousness, which then creates a reality of its own.