The Sociology of Religion

Here is a paper by an Athabasca University Sociology 231 Student that points to a tradition of suppression in Christianity. This is not to point fingers. The “sacred” text of all religious have been tampered and doctored with in some way either because class, gender, and national interests. It…

If you can just get your mind together Then come on across to me We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sunrise From the bottom of the sea But first, are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have. Jimi Hendrix

When I was a young lad I was attracted to rock music that had spiritual, mystical, and religious overtones. Of course, because I had rejected the Catholicism of my birth I would never have shown up in a statistic on the prevalence of spirituality. I thus represented a spirituality…

By: Anthony RendaPart 1, Question: Pick one of the two textbooks and write a 1600-word summary of the ways in which either the Christian Right or the New Age movement represents opportunistic exploitation of fundamental human needs.

Sociologists have thus far figured that religion is nothing more than elite ideology, collective delusion, or Sunday social event. While these perspective do represent truth, religion is ideology, it can be delusion, and it is often little more than a social event, it is also much more. Religion is…

In this course I define religion as an institution setup to answer the big questions and then I ask the students to evaluate the definition. Some love it, some like it, and some aren’t too sure, but nobody dismisses it outright because it has (in my opinion) profound explanatory…

The question in the first assignment of this course is all about science, and in particular the closed minded quality of elite scientific discourse like that found in the “big gun” journals like Nature and Science. You’d never think that you’d find high priests decrying heretics and calling us…

This response to assignment four is a good response because because it correctly identifies the “authentic core” of religion, which is partly the search for answers. Note how the identification of this common course leads directly to a form of “unification.” Differences between three widely different “emerging religions” (neopaganism,…

In my opinion many scholars that study religion have never actually been interested or taken a part in a religious institution. Instead they have based their work on secondary sources…. Or they use outsider perspective to understand the formation and impact of the religious institution on the society being…

Empiricism is a philosophical position that holds that all “truths” should be backed up by something verifiable. Empiricists hold that we should never claim to know anything unless we can refer to some sort of experiential evidence that supports our claims to truth. Thus, for example, we know gravity…

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