Religion and Secularism, Essay Example

The three articles, Richard Sosis’ “The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual”, John Bowen “Muslims and Citizens”, and William Beeman’s “Fighting the Good Fight: Fundamentalism and Religious Revival” examine the various societal effects of belonging to religious groups. These effects are considered in terms of individual identities, the formation of a group structure and inter-group relations.

Sosis’ text provides an account of the ritual initiation and inclusion into religious groups. Of particular importance is the notion that the belonging to religious group signifies a form of communication. The ritual initiation denotes a communicative act in which the individual defines him or herself through allegiance to the group, and thus establishes a discursive relationship with the other members of the community. John Bowen discusses the French legal decision to ban Muslim headscarves. This decision is crucial insofar as it evokes questions of the meaning of belonging to a particular religious group within a society that stresses a secular world-view. What becomes problematic in such situations are questions of identity on individual and societal levels, which demarcates a tension between various groups. Beeman’s article provides a reading of the concept of fundamentalism, in which fundamentalism denotes a specific reaction to societal developments. Religious fundamentalism suggests a consolidation of identity around a unified ideal and world-view, against the beliefs of other communities.

All authors therefore stress the importance of such religious groups to the formation of identities. Accordingly, they allow for clear existential stances to be taken by individuals, which serve as affirmations of belief and communication. This consolidates the social group, giving it a form of structure, while also imbuing the individual’s life with meaning. As the articles note, these group formation strategies can be viewed from various theoretical perspectives, such as behaviorist or evolutionary. Such perspectives stress the fundamental advantages to belonging to a group. The group does not only allow for the introduction of meaning into existence, but proves advantageous to the terms of existence itself. That is to say, it is through communal organization that life essentially becomes easier, as resources and beliefs needed for survival become more effectively distributed throughout the group structure. At the same time, this creates a community of trust, one in which each member of the group remains committed to the other: this in effect increases the strength of the initial ideology to which the group members pledge allegiance. Furthermore, this community allows the group to effectively confront “the Other”, those individuals or groups which are viewed as radically different.

While all three articles provide compelling theoretical perspectives with which to consider social groups, the articles of Sosis and Beeman tend to place a critical emphasis on form over content. That is to say, what is crucial to the researchers is a common form of organization, looking at benefits to the group members, the logic of group formation, etc.,: in essence, there is an accent placed on the structuring effects of such group strategies. What is missing from the accounts is a thorough consideration of the content of these group strategies. In other words, the authors do not take specific beliefs seriously – what each group believes in, thus delineating them as a group – thereby omitting a crucial feature that consolidates the group itself, while also separating it from other societal organizations. While Beeman does examine specific examples of “fundamentalism”, this only occurs with the aim of providing a definition of fundamentalism as a whole. It can be said that what is lacking in Sosis and Beeman’s articles is a phenomenological approach, one that remains faithful to the first-person perspective of an individual who exists in a given group context, as opposed to creating resemblances between groups. Although such an approach is arguably also largely absent from Bowen’s text, the author nonetheless attempts to think the particularity of the controversy of France regarding secular and sectarian perspectives.

Hence, the methodology employed in the articles of Sosis and Beeman may be understood as presenting a certain classical epistemological approach, in which there is a clear separation between the observer and the phenomenon that is being observed. Accordingly, common formal structures inherent to many groups are extrapolated, while a serious and rigorous consideration of the content of these groups remains absent. This appears as a classificatory gesture, one that undermines the real, immanent content that is essential to the continued existence and proliferation of individual and particular groups, beyond any shared formal structures. It is Bowen’s text that directly addresses this point, by calling for an immanent dialogue within communities, to understand not only how groups can continue to exist autonomously but also in relation to the Other.