Religion: Durkheim, Weber, and Contemporary Research — Quiz
1.
According to Durkheim, what is the primary social function of ritual?
2.
Which of the following best describes Weber's position on the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism?
3.
What did Berger concede in *The Desecularization of the World* (1999)?
4.
What does the rise of 'nones' in the United States primarily reflect, according to Hout and Fischer (2014)?
5.
Which framework explains high American religious participation by reference to competitive pluralism in the religious marketplace?
6.
What does Cavanaugh argue in *The Myth of Religious Violence* (2009)?
7.
According to Heelas and Woodhead's *The Spiritual Revolution* (2005), what broader civilizational shift does the growth of holistic spiritualities reflect?
8.
What did Whitehouse et al. (2019) find regarding the relationship between complex societies and moralizing gods?
9.
Explain what Durkheim meant by the claim that 'society is the true object of religious worship,' and distinguish this from Marx's 'opium of the people' critique.
10.
What is 'existential security' in Norris and Inglehart's account of secularization, and what evidence supports it?
11.
How does Weber use the concept of 'theodicy' to organize his comparative sociology of religion?
12.
The secularization thesis has been described as both empirically refuted and theoretically indispensable. Drawing on at least four authors or studies from this module, assess the current state of the secularization debate and explain what, if anything, remains defensible in the original thesis.