Tag: religion
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Faith Schools in England and Wales
28.2% of schools are faith schools, most of them Christian.
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A Merry but Secular Christmas!
A YouGov Poll conducted last year in 2020 shows that the majority of those who celebrate Christmas (and Easter) in the UK do so in an entirely secular way. The survey results provide some useful evidence to support the view that religion does not play a significant role in British society, as this traditionally Christian…
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Spiritual Abuse – its relevance to A-level Sociology
Spiritual abuse can be defined as the weaponisation of religious beliefs in order to coerce or control someone who shares that same set of beliefs. This may take the form of someone with power within a religious institution using their position of authority to manipulate their congregation or followers into doing what they want them…
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Jews and Muslims Unite to Help Combat Poverty
Sociology is usually all doom and gloom, but here’s a nice example of something positive for once… This community food kitchen in Nottingham is a joint project between Jews and Muslims which takes surplus food from supermarkets and cooks it to distribute it to those in financial difficulty. Relevance to A-level Sociology This is a…
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Paedophile-Priests and the Declining Signficance of Religion…..
A recent report found that there have been at least 216 000 child victims of sexual abuse since the 1950s at the hands of clergy and other officials working for the Catholic Church in France. The victims are mainly teenage boys and the figures are probably an underestimate. There could well be over 300 000…
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Sociological Perspectives on Hate Crime
What is Hate Crime? The Home Office defines Hate Crime as ‘ ‘Any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ (Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2018-19). There are five main characteristics which the police monitor….. race…
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Lakewood Church and the Prosperity Gospel
Three out of four of the Largest churches in the U.S. preach the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ – these are megachurches which preach the idea that God is a spiritual source which individuals can call upon to ‘enrich’ their lives – popular buzzwords include ‘hope, destiny and bounty’, and the sermons are filled with optimism, with the…
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Contemporary sociology – religion in the news
Three very recent examples of news events relevant to the sociology of religion. Austria recently joined the list of European countries banning the wearing of face veils in public – the headscarf is now banned in primary schools, but not Jewish or Sikh head coverings. Other EU countries to have done similar recently include France,…
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LifeLines – A Perfect Example of a Postmodern Approach to Religion
Lifelines: Notes on Life and Love, Faith and Doubt is a new book published in November 2018 written by Martin Rowe and Malcolm Doney, and to my mind it’s a perfect expression of a postmodern approach to religious belief. The two authors are (respectively) a volunteer priest and one volunteer vicar in their local parishes,…
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Karen Armstrong – September 11th 2001, Islam and the West
Karen Armstrong argues that there is no inherent incompatibility between the Western and Islamic world, but sees economic and political factors as the main reasons for increasing tensions in recent decades. Armstrong’s arguments can be used to criticise Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civlizations’ thesis, which sees increasing conflict between different cultures/ religions as an inevitable outcome…
