Lecture 3:
The Cultural Construction of
Religion
SOC 210 Religion and Society
Dr. Yuting Wang
Department of International Studies
September 12 & 14, 2022
What is Culture?
Elements of Culture
Language
Norms (expectations)
Sanctions (punishments and rewards)
Values
Geertz’s definition
Culture “denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions
expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about
and attitudes toward life.” (Geertz 1972:89)
Religion as a Cultural System
Cognitive superstructure
doctrine: “Prose”
Imaginative and narrative infrastructure
experience, symbol, story, community, ritual: “Poetry”
Organizational structures
sect, church, denomination, congregation
The Social Construction of Reality
Social Constructionism (Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckmann 1966)
Reality is socially constructed
“Social order is a human product, or more precisely,
an ongoing human production.”
The social order is created in a dialectical process of
▪ Externalization
▪ Objectivation
▪ Internalization
Externalization
We create symbols to help us interpret the world around
us and communicate with each other.
Objectivation
“The transformation of man’s products into a world that
not only derives from man, but that comes to confront
him as a facticity outside himself… The humanly
produced world becomes something ‘out there’”(Berger
1967:8-9)
Internalization
Socialization: individuals internalize objectified symbols.
Symbolic Definition of Religion
Clifford Geertz (1966):
“Religion is
(1) a system of symbols which acts to
(2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting
moods and motivations in [people] by
(3) formulating conceptions of a general order of
existence and
(4) clothing these conceptions with such a aura of
factuality that the moods and motivations seem
uniquely realistic.”
Symbols
What is Symbol?
a bearer of meaning, e.g., an object, event, quality, or relation
a tangible, public, observable, concrete embodiment of ideas,
attitudes, judgments, longings or beliefs
something outside the organism influencing the social and
psychological processes that shape public behavior
Examples of symbols
the Crescent
a painting [one that conveys meaning]
a word, e.g., "God," "reality," "woman."
a story, a ritual, a "holy book"
Images from Google
The Experiential Dimension of Religion
Nonrational, nonlogical, nonempirical
Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinosum
Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy (1923)
▪ a sense of awe and fear.
▪ the absolute unapproachability of the holy.
▪ power, energy, or urgency.
▪ an awareness of the “wholly otherness” of the holy.
▪ a sense of fascination with and attraction to the holy.
The Nasir al-Mulk Mosque Shah Cheragh Photos by Yuting Wang
Photos by Yuting Wang
Photos by Yuting Wang
Religious Experience
We tend to sacralize what we value highly.
Religious experiences are extraordinary. But not all extraordinary
experiences are religious.
The need for meaning
The need for belonging
Nonrational religious experiences vary greatly in intensity, frequency,
context, and content.
People who value and expect religious experience are those who report
having had one.
Social expectations and norms influence how individuals interpret their
experiences.
“Any attempt to speak
without speaking any
particular language is not
more hopeless than the
attempt to have a religion
that shall be no religion in
particular…”
(George Santayana,
Reason in Religion)
Myth
What is Myth?
Stories or belief systems that help people understand the
nature of the cosmos, the purpose and meaning of life, or the
role and origin of evil and suffering.
Myths explain and justify specific cultural values and social rules.
They are symbolic statements about the meaning and purpose of
life in this world. (Robert Bellah suggests that all religious symbols
are in a fundamental sense true.)
Myth is capable of generating powerful, pervasive, and long-
lasting moods (awe of God’s power, humility, fear of God) and
motivations (repentance, change of attitudes, and behavior).
Ritual
Orthopraxy vs. Orthodoxy
Religious ritual usually involves affirmation of the myths and
gives emotional impulse to the belief system.
Myths sustain ecclesiastical rituals and generate inspiration
and a sense of awe.
Examples:
Muslim’s daily prayers
The Holy Communion (The Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, or the Mass)
Burial rituals
Symbols, Worldviews and Ethos
Worldview refers to the intellectual framework within which one
explains the meaning of life. It is more abstract than myth.
“A people’s ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life, its
moral and aesthetic style and mood, it is the underlying attitude
toward themselves and their world”(Geertz 1958:421).
Simply speaking, worldview is concept, ethos is attitude.
Symbols connect worldview to ethos, transform facts to value,
bind worldview and ethos into a unified system of meaning, and
help preserve order in the structures of society and in the
structuring of the individual mind.
Critical Thinking
If religion is a cultural system, sustained by a shared meaning
system, is a lack of a single uniting religious outlook a serious
problem for a pluralistic society like India or the United
States? Is the result anomie? Are common interests and
interdependence sufficient to bind societies together?
Can any religion exist free of cultural influence? How about
religions that are considered “world religions,” such as
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism?
Symbols in Movies
Jodhaa Akbar (2008):
Mann Mohana:
[Link]
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
[Link]
Dragon Blade (2015):
[Link]
35s
Shang-Chi (2021):
[Link]