The course will draw primarily from contemporary sociological studies and theoretical treatises on religion, but also secondarily from classic sociological works. Students should remember that this course studies the sociological elements of religious belief and practice, and thus the course is not a celebration of faith or religion. As an influence on perception, religion can exert both a normalizing and a destabilizing effect. To the extent a religious institution corresponds to the established social order, it tends to reinforce that order. In contrast, religious movements often arise that contradict some aspect of the social order, and such movements, to the extent they are successful, supplant established norms and routines, and in the process transform perception.
Religion is thus both a mechanism or order and of change.
This course will consider the often competing religious forms that shape perception and in turn, values, lifestyle, and behavior. However, religion has never existed as a discrete institution separate from all others. Just as religion shapes society, so society, especially social change, shapes religion. Established religions, namely Catholicism, represented and supported traditional pre-capitalist life, but also traditional assumptions about the nature of existence. In contrast, ascetic Protestantism, as the embodiment of rationalized daily conduct, introduced a systematic and critical attitude towards life, that satisfaction derived from never ending work, whether economic, scientific, or whatever other form.