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Religion is defined as recognition on the part of man of a controlling superhuman power entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship; the feeling or the spiritual attitudes of those recognizing such a controlling power.
Religion can be viewed from many perspectives: by philosophers, historians, aestheticians and theologians. The subject of this article is the social aspect of religion. People ask how is religion related to the structure and processes of human societies and how it both reflect and affects stratification systems in society, political and economic processes, levels of integration and of conflict, and the course of social change. In viewing the religious patterns themselves - in which the varieties of religious organizations and the types of leaders will be examined.
Nature and Significance
To examine religion from the perspective of the social aspect is to require a rather drastic shift in the way religion is usually viewed. The sharply contrasting beliefs about the road to salvation, for example, are neither evaluated nor simply described. The social aspect is rather concerned with the conditions under which the various beliefs appear the variations of beliefs among societies, groups, and individuals, and the consequences of the various conceptions for social interaction.
The social aspects of religion are thus studied in the conviction that major dimensions of religious belief and practice are only partly understood if they are not seen as part of a large social order. The reverse of this is also true: many of the most critical problems in the social aspect involve a religious factor. A purely rational economic model of man, for example, whether it involves the market system or individuals economic behavior, must take account of the "distortions" produced by religious motivation and values. Prediction and explanation of political behavior are improved if, in addition to knowledge of class, education, occupation, traditional, political identity, and like, there is knowledge of religious group membership, belief, and behavior.
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meland
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nice John | Mar 27th, 2003
i like ure little story
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