Sociolgy

Assess the view that religion inhibits social change 33 marks

Religion is hard to define as It means different things to different people, using a too narrow definition, such as religion is the belief in god, can result in excluding recognized religions, therefore isn’t generalizable to wider society. The debate is ongoing whether religion either promotes or inhibits social change.in other words inhibiting social change means to stop changes which are occurring in society today. Whilst examining theories, functionalism, Marxism and feminism all saw religion as to maintain the status quo, meaning stopping social change and stabilizing society as it is and preventing change. However many sociologists argue that religion can also be a force for change.

Religion can be seen as a conservative force in two senses, one being that it is often seen as being traditional and defending moral views and roles.it upholds traditional beliefs about how society should be organized. The other way is that it can be seen as conservative as it functions to conserve or preserve things as they are, meaning that they are happy with the way things were traditionally, and because of this do not want change to occur despite the fact it already is.it can be said that upholding these traditional beliefs stabilizes society whilst maintaining the status quo. Most religions have traditional and conservative beliefs about moral issues and many of them oppose changes that would allow individuals more freedom in personal/sexual matters for example the Catholic Church forbids divorce and abortion. The fact that religion is seen in this way by a number of people suggests that religion inhibits social change due to the fact its preventing people in certain religions to be able to do what they plead, therefore because of this inhibits change in society today. This can be seen as unreliable as a number of people from a particular religion may not follow the rules and regulations set out, therefore...