Original scientific paper
THE STRUCTURE OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS IN URBAN AND RURAL SOCIETY
Esad Ćimić
Abstract
Some authors claim that the religion is »born« out of those social structures which maintain the »routine ways of cultural translation«. The routine kinds of consciousness are characteristic for the situations of restriction of the human beings in their relation to nature and among themselves. (Marx) These last are manifested as the captivity of the individual in the group, where the religion has the last, absolute levels of human activity. Yet. in the sociological analysis of religion the thesis of the irrelevance of the individual consciousness can not be accepted. The real functioning of the religious system is possible to verify only by taking into consideration the individual consciousness.
In Yugoslav society three levels of the religious consciousness can be discerned: 1) Prejudice — especially in the socially closed environments, more as a style of life than a complete religious system; 2) Traditionally — confessional religions — believing in the revealed God. Here it is difficult to realize the »Unity in Variety«, and because of that they act on the social level as a disintegration force. Yugoslavs- -theists belong to one of these religions. 3) There are certain forms of the society religion (atheist religion) where the negation of religion acquires a religious form. Here only the subject of faith is changed, and man is again in relation of dependency expecting a supernatural protection from it.
The religious consciousness exist 1. as an immediate consciousness, the individual relation of dependency, 2. as a mediated individual consciousness, where the individual separates his religiosity from the religiosity of others, and 3. as a formally and logically structured religious consciousness (theological consciousness).
Accounting for all this, the religion is operationally defined as a consciousness and practice expressed in adhering to religious dogmas, in reproduction of rites and observance of religious moral code. Each religion is a complexity comprising three main elements: a) rational: rationalization of the existence of supernatural forces; b) emotional: feelings of dependence and submission, c) ritual: the sum of activities defining the norms of a confession, which are designed to induce the benevolence of the supernatural beings. Only by these the individual beliefs acquire the social form, organizing themselves into confessional communities. All the three elements appear as a unity, one always domineering.
In the research aimed at the construction of a typology of religion, two kinds of indicators of religiosity were used: objective ones, comprising the frequency of religious practices, and subjective ones expressed ,as the individual attitudes of each particular individual toward the basic issues pertaining to the cosmogonic, anthropological and practical-ethical sphere. On the basis of these indicators a scale of religious or atheist intensity was constructed and a typology including all the categories of the believers or non-believers was elaborated. Also two deviant cases, not covered by the scale, were described.
There are some differences between the city and village religiosity. The traditional immobility, emotional coloring, the complete expression of the religiosity in the observance of rites or of atheism in neglecting them, are the most frequent characteristics of the believers or atheists in villages.
The peasant coming to town spends at first his free time in religious practices, but later on, hurrying to compensate for his lack in intellectual and technical sphere he abandons his past and its most important aspect-his religiosity. The secularization of the society leads to a diminishing of religiosity.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
156604
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1971.
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