Theoretical Frameworks

Religion is a very complex phenomenon, and therefore any attempt to study religion can easily become confusing and overwhelming without tools to guide the exploration and to organize new information. In academia, scholars rely on theories, or sets of ideas to explain something, as a way to approach, understand, and process information about a religion or religions. A theoretical framework is an organized process to interpret, analyze and organize information using a set of ideas provided by a theory. This lesson will address the role of theory and theoretical frameworks in the study of world religions and introduce some common frameworks to use in this class.

Lesson Objectives:

• define theory and theoretical framework
• recognize theoretical frameworks commonly used to study religion
• describe a specific theoretical framework and why it can be useful to study world religions

Some Theories & Theoretical Frameworks in the Study of Religion

Theories and theoretical frameworks are tools that help students, teachers and scholars move beyond simply describing and/or memorizing details and information about a religion and toward creating new information or a new perspective about a religion. Theories or frameworks make it easier to draw conclusions that are based on the theoretical approach while at the same time acknowledging that there are different perspectives in the study of religion. By taking one theoretical approach, it also says ‘hey, there might be a different way to view this from a different theoretical perspective.’ In this class you will be encouraged to apply more than one theoretical perspective in your assignments while at the same time learning about the ways other students have applied theoretical perspectives in their work.

There are a wide variety of old and new frameworks in the field of religion, and this lesson will introduce a few; substantivism, functionalism, interpretative systems of meaning, symbolic interactionism, atheist & anarchist critiques, and liberation theology.

Substantivism

Substantivist theoretical frameworks highlight attributes (beliefs, practices, symbols, etc.) in a religion and the meanings they give to believers. This approach emphasizes that religion makes sense to believers as long as it holds value and is comprehensible. Early 20th century substantivist scholars focused on the explanatory value of religion for its adherents, such as creation stories to explain human origins. Later on scholars began to focus on the importance of religious experiences to fascinate, terrify and/or convince believers. One of the most notable substantivists, Mircea Eliade, focused on the ways religion satiate the human desire for otherworldly perfection and the longing to find meaning, and Eliade also explored common patterns various religions.

Functionalism

Functionalist theories emphasize the function, or role, that religion plays for a society, a group or an individual. Functionalist approaches view religion as “performing certain functions for society” such as binding people in a group or dividing people into groups. One of the most notable bodies of research within the functionalist approach to religion comes from French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). In his book, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Durkeim argued that religion is not an external force outside of society, but it is society. His framework is based on a dichotomy between the sacred and the profane; while the profane represents the daily and mundane, the sacred is set apart and forbidden. He defined religion as ‘a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, which unite one single moral community into a ‘church’.  According to Durkheim, beliefs and practices do not come from an outside force, but they come from within the collective moral force of a society and have been set apart to imbue authority to the belief system. He argues that society needs religion in order to maintain moral and social order, enforce values and norms, and bond the community. People establish social bonds through shared beliefs and practices, and this allows people to sacrifice their ego, or individualism, to the common good of the group. Durkheim describes deity, or ‘God’ as the embodiment of a society; the traits and characteristics are projected onto what he refers to as a ‘mirror in the sky,’ society looking up at itself.

Click here to watch a video explaining functionalism by the Khan Academy.

Interpretive Systems of Meaning

In the 20^th century, new frameworks addressed religion from an interpretive analytical approach that aimed to move beyond reducing religion to serving a function, and toward developing a better understanding of religion as a system of symbols and meanings that comprise religion as a cultural system. In the his book, The Interpretation of Cultures (1966/73), Clifford Geertz defined religion as

‘a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.’

From an interpretive perspective, religion provides frameworks for life that shape human behavior by offering a blueprint to understand deep questions that science and reason fail to answer and providing webs of meaning to appease insecurities. Religion can relieve anxiety about life after death and offer interpretive frameworks on how to organize and structure reality.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism aims to provide an understanding of how people make sense of their world by employing aspects they have developed over their individual lives in a multiplicity of contexts. It is a theoretical framework for understanding human behavior and viewpoints through the lens of human interaction. Through symbolic interactionism, a researcher can interpret human behavior according to the meanings individuals give to by creating significant symbols that guide behavior.  

Victor Turner focused on symbolic practice in his theoretical framework that addressed ritual and rites of passage. Turner expanded Arthur Van Gennup’s (1909) three-phase model for ritual transition: separation – transition – incorporation. According to Van Gennup, disorder induced by social change is managed through the symbolic performance of transition within rites of passage. Prior to the change, the individual (or group of individuals) is separated from the group. They then partake in a transitional performance where they leave their former position or identity. When they rejoin the group, they assume their new identity or position. Van Gennup describes the middle, or transitional, phase as the liminal period that is characterized as ‘anti-structure’ because the individual or group in transition are outside of the social order.

A common example of Van Gennup’s three-phase rite of passage is the custom of sequestering and veiling a ‘bride’ prior to and during a marriage ceremony. In some American weddings, the bride is ‘hidden’ or separated from the group prior to the commencement of the ceremony that facilitates the social transitioning from ‘daughter’ to ‘wife’. During the transition, the veil disguises the identity during the time when the individual is no longer who they were, but not quite who they are about to become. At the end of the ceremony, the veil is lifted and the individual rejoins the group with a new identity and a new social position. This performance is rooted in a historical era when women were considered property and the wedding symbolically represented the transmission of property from father to husband. In liberalized societies, this performace has been modified to symbolically represent love.

Victor Turner expanded Van Gennup’s notion of liminality, which he characterized as betwixt and between (1967) and he focused his attention on the significant role of ‘anti-structure’ during the liminal phase.  According to Turner, the liminal phase results in communitas, which is unstructured community where the members experiencing liminality are temporarily equal until they reaggregate back into society and assume their social positioning. During communitas, people participate in activities and behaviors and cross social boundaries that are otherwise forbidden within the pre-existing social structure.

Click here to watch a video about symbolic interactionism by the Khan Academy.

Atheist/Anarchist

Religion has also been challenged as an authoritarian system. In his short essay, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Sigmund Freud described religion as a fictive illusion that positions ‘God’ as the parent after the child realizes the shortcomings of the mother and father.

Freud’s take on religion echoes earlier works by turn of the 19th century anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) who argued that religion was a fiction that partnered with the authoritarian state by serving as a coping mechanism for inequality which prevented people from initiating change. In his book, God and the State, Bakunin wrote:

 “the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice.”

Along the same lines,  Karl Marx (1818-1883) characterized religion as the ‘the opiate of the masses’ meaning that like an opiate, religion fails to address the causes of suffering and oppression, it simply makes it more tolerable. Marx’s metaphor is derived from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844) as well as the Marquis de Sade (1797) who referred to religion as ‘this opium you feed your people.’  These critics point out that religion prevents social change and serves the needs of oppressors because suffering and oppression is often correlated with righteousness, such as the biblical story of Job, and that power is associated with sin and corruption. The majority of critical religious analysis targets Christianity because the historical writing emerged from the euro-centric ‘post-enlightment’ period when science began to challenge the authority of the church.

Today, critics continue to shed light on the ways that power structures have used religion as a means of controlling, marginalizing and even exterminating populations of people. The documentary, Constantine’s Sword  (2008), addresses the relationship between the Catholic Church, political power, and anti-semitism throughout history.

Liberation Theology

In the middle of the 20^th century, the emergence of liberation theology in Latin America challenged representations of religion as an oppressive apparatus and shed light on the role of religion as a means to empowerment. In the 1960s, Marxism integrated with Catholicism when a growing number of priests increasingly witnessed abject poverty and exploitation of the poor and asked: What would Jesus do? Several activists priest, such as Jon Sobrino, challenged the church to target issues of inequality and oppression. Sobrino’s writings, such as Jesus the Liberator (1991), Christ the Liberator (1999), The True Church and the Poor(1984), and Spirituality of Liberation (1990) emphasized the emancipatory aspects of Christian scriptures.

At the same time that Christianity was being recast as emancipatory in Latin America, Islam offered liberation theology for African-Americans in the United States, and feminist spirituality gained momentum as part of a critical analysis to patriarchy in world religions. From an interpretive perspective, liberation theology enabled a social community to liberate themselves from religious hegemonies and reclaim symbols and meanings as part of a cultural framework that expressed the experiences and values of the community.

The video below, Religion: Crash Course in Sociology #39, provides a brief summary of some of the theoretical perspectives used in the field of Sociology to address religion

Applying Theoretical Frameworks in this course

Theoretical frameworks are tools for academic examination into a religion and religious phenomena. Like tools in a tool box, theoretical tools are not exclusive to each other. A student or scholar can use more than one and modify and manipulate a framework as needed. The idea behind using a theoretical framework is to help the researcher define their approach, organize information, and present new information from a particular perspective.

A theoretical framework strengthens the study in the following ways:

1. It helps to create an explicit statement, or thesis, and permits the reader to evaluate it critically.
2. It connects the researcher to existing knowledge which gives a basis for the thesis and the perspective.
3. It forces the research to go beyond simply describing and generalizing by addressing ‘why’ and ‘how’.
4. It defines the limits of a thesis, and highlights the need to examine phenomena from a different framework and perspective.

This lesson provides a brief definition for theory and theoretical framework, and it introduced a few frameworks and perspectives commonly used to study religion. The terms and concepts presented here provide academic tools to complete activities in the upcoming lessons which will address the five world religions covered in this course.

References & Resources

• Theoretical Frameworks USC Library guides
• Functional and Substantivist Definitions of Religion
• Religion as a Cultural System, Clifford Geertz in Interpretation of Cultures
• ‘As society, so religion’, William E. Paden in Interpreting the Sacred: ways of viewing religion.

For Discussion: Select the theoretical framework that appeals to you the most. You can use one presented in this lesson or a different framework from another class. Describe the approach and why it appeals to you the most. If you use outside sources, be sure to cite them. (250 words, respond to two other students)

When you complete the discussion, move on to Symbols & Meanings.