RELIGION AND SOCIETY Religion and

Functionalism
Like many other social scientists at the turn of the 20th century, Durkheim
thought that he could discover the essence of religion.
Durkheim also identified the various functions that religion served in these
and many other societies. They are as follows (Durkheim Functionalist View):

1. Religion can promote social solidarity through common symbols, beliefs,

norms and collective rituals.
2. It may also provide individuals and with groups with emotional comfort
and support, morale and motivation, and a sense of individual group
identity.
3. All societies through religion require collectively held sentiments and
rituals for their cohesion and survival.
The Conflict Perspective of Religion: Karl
Marx
Marx was particularly interested in how religion's comforting messages and
promises of future rewards diverted people's attention away from social
inequalities and injustices.
For example, whereas the British used religion to denounce(declare)
violence and disorder in the American colonies, the colonists by
transforming their revolt(rebelde) into a "morality play" in which the forces
of good (the Patriots a protagonist who represents humanity as a whole)
battled Satan and his early emissaries (the British emissaries are more
likely to be representing governments, political leaders, and nonreligious
institutions, and an emissary's mission is usually to negotiate or to gather
information.), were able to mobilize the American people for revolution.
Dwight Billings (1990) compared religion's in the union struggles of
textile workers with those of coal miners in the rural South after WWII.
According to the Marxist model, religious leaders in both cases would
side with the owners and oppose union activities as "ungodly and
wicked."
In the North Carolina towns, churches and ministers were tightly
integrated into the community, which gave mill owners considerable
influence in church affairs in general and ministers' salaries and other
resources in particular.
Religion and Social Change: Max Weber
This led Max Weber to conclude that not only do economic forces shape
religion, but under certain circumstances, the reverse can also occur, and
religious values and beliefs may promote economic and social change.
In Weber's most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, he noted that capitalism arose in the Protestant nations of
England, Holland, and Germany much faster than it did in Catholic
countries.
The publication of The Protestant Ethic in 1904 and 1905 aroused
considerable controversy, and some people accused Weber of a one-
sided interpretation that religion "caused" capitalism, which Weber
denied, to lend additional support to his case, Weber undertook a
massive study of Eastern religions.
Securalization and Religious Movements

Rodney Stark argued that during the past century, only one social
science thesis has had near universal acceptance: the secularization
thesis, which maintains that the global spread of modernization and of
more rational and pragmatic approaches to life inevitably leads to the
decline of small-scale societies that are based on traditional and
religious worldviews.
It also becomes privatized, in that people stop searching for spiritual
fulfillment through religious organizations and instead seek religious
meaning in private programs for self- discovery, such as "popular
psychology, Reader's Digest folklore, and personal superstitions.
Religious Movements in a Global Context
Irving Horowitz (1990) argues that fundamentalism is not a uniquely
American phenomenon but is part of a global pattern of popular
religious movement against modernization, secularization, and elite
visions of the future that invariably offer ordinary people few rewards
and a disproportionate share of the costs of development.
Consequently, politics has become infused with religious (and family)
symbols, and religious groups have become very active in politics, both
at the national level and globally.
Prior to colonialism and the discovery of oil in the Middle East in the
late 19th century, relations between priest (ulema) and secular rulers
were for the most part harmonious and cooperative.
In recent years, small, autonomous, lay-directed grassroots groups and
organizations called communidades eclesiales de base (CEBS), or
"Christian base communities," have emerged in many parts of Latin
America.
Exactly what meanings will be attached to the term liberation theology
in the future is uncertain, as in the movement's long term political
significance.
Social Correlates of Religion
In the United States, although many Americans with "old money“(pamanang
yaman) are members of liberal mainstream churches, in terms of annual income,
Jews rank highest among all religious denominations.
Moreover, in the case of the United States, the position of the three major religious
groups on the political spectrum has not changed much over the past few decades:
"Protestants(Calvinist) are still more likely to be Republican(Grupo lang ang gusto)
Jews(Israelites in the Eastern Mediterranean ) and Catholics more likely to be
Democratic(choose governing officials to do so)... Jews are more likely to be
liberal(willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own;
open to new ideas) on political issues, Protestants to be conservative(to promote
and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values.), and Catholics to be
in the middle (Greeley, 1989; 1999; Kosmin and Lachman, 1993).
 Reference from Upacked “https://youtu.be/ERILnSrAXbI”

Data of Jewish People Wealth

Successful Wealth
According to 2020
1) Education
PEW research
2) Urbanization
center report
3) Entrepreneurship