Sociological Perspectives on Religion

This presentation is based on an essay examining religion through three key sociological perspectives: fundamentalist perspective, social conflict perspective, and symbolic interactionist perspective. The fundamentalist perspective examines how religion helps society function. This section of the presentation observes how religion can install positive values into its followers, and also how religion can improve the family institution through a variety of means. The second perspective that this presentation examines is the social conflict perspective. This observes how religion has been used throughout human history to justify acts from which modern-day society would generally abstain. The acts examined in the presentation will be divine right inequality (such as the caste system of the Hindu faith) and gender-based inequality (such as the sects that exist in Islam). The final perspective is symbolic interactionism. This portion of the presentation will focus on the role symbols and ceremonies have throughout religious life. Highlighted here are mainly how these commonalities in a religion produce a sense of solidarity between its members.