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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9alqwyaSOiU
 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6d3f8W-oc
 Dragon Blade (2015):
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxqJF_7RCkE&t=
35s

 Shang-Chi (2021):
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGl3tBltok4