Religion and Social Control Atta Community, Ikeduru
Chapter One
Objective of the Study
The objectives of this study are as follows:
- To critically analyze the duties of religion so as to correct abuses
- To examine the principles of good governance and how to instruct both the political and religious leaders
- To investigate the influence of religion in Nigerian traditional culture
- To assess the functionality of religion on the Nigerian democracy.
CHAPTER TWO
RELIGION AS A MEANING-MAKING SYSTEM
Researchers have extensively examined the idea of religion as a meaning-making system.
Meaning-making systems reflect cultural beliefs, which often include religious beliefs (Park, Edmondson & Mills, 2010). This is especially relevant to the U.S. population, considering the majority of U.S. citizens claim affiliation with a religious faith (Pew Research Center, 2014). For many reasons, religious beliefs may be at the heart of people’s global meaning systems (2010). Pargament (1997) suggested that religion could effectively help people comprehend suffering. Religious beliefs are powerful because they are typically comprehensive in addressing people’s questions about existence and they are unlikely to be disconfirmed given their foundation in something sacred (Emmons, 2005). The influence of religion has been noted at different points in Park’s (2005) meaning-making coping model.
In a general sense, religion can affect aspects of global meaning such as beliefs about fairness, control, benevolence in the world, and vulnerability. Park (2005) suggested that initial distress after a stressor might be higher among religious individuals than non-religious people. After an extended period following the stressor, though, the influence of religion can lower distress. For people who hold strong religious beliefs, religion may be especially prominent in meaning-making because its pervasive presence may make it chronically accessible and omnipresent in their lives. This means that religious attributions can be more easily made for traumatic events. In support of this idea, Kunst, Bjorck, and Tan (2000) found that university students who endorsed higher religiosity were more likely to attribute negative events to God or spiritual forces whereas less religious participants were more likely to attribute negative events to the natural world or chance. Park and Gutierrez (2013) observed that participants who believed God was in control experienced greater fear and anxiety than those who did not believe this.
Although people have the ability to frame experiences in accordance with their beliefs, they may still have difficulty coming to terms with disparities between their global meaning and situational meaning. Religion is seen as contributing to this reconciliation of disparities. Harris and colleagues (2015) highlighted the importance of religion as part of the meaning-making system, noting how the religious meanings which survivors make of their trauma serve as a better predictor of adjustment than the trauma severity itself.
An examination of the meaning-making model offers direction on how people try to reconcile the discrepancy between global meaning and situational meaning. As mentioned earlier, this global-situational meaning discrepancy leads to distress. Such distress can result in negative emotions, depression, loss of interest, and sometimes even physical decline (Skaggs & Barron, 2005). When this happens, people assess their psychological resources to help them alleviate this distress, a process known as coping.
Coping
In order to address these issues and relieve their distress, people engage in coping behavior. Coping strategies can help people reconcile the differences between situational meaning and global meaning. This is termed meaning-making coping (Park, 2005). Meaning- making coping is a cognitive process in which people try to re-interpret the information from their experience in an alternative way so that they can believe their meaning-making system is not senseless. This is also called reappraisal (Gillies & Neimeyer, 2006). Some people develop positive reappraisals when they successfully identify benefits from the situation that help them to adapt to the event. These efforts to relieve their distress and find resolution are not always successful, though. If people determine that their resources for coping are inadequate in addressing their discomfort and finding resolution, they will engage in a search for meaning, which can be indicative of further distress.
Some people find resolution by using religious beliefs incorporated into their global meaning systems to inform reappraisals of their situational meaning (Pargament & Park, 1997). For example, survivors of war, displacement, and torture (Bryant-Davis & Wong, 2013) have reported religious coping strategies. Research suggests that survivors with more severe PTSD engage in more frequent religious coping strategies than those with less severe PTSD. Positive religious coping is thought to support protective functions for interpersonal trauma survivors; however, if a trauma survivor feels judged or rejected by God, they tend to experience greater distress (2013).
CHAPTER THREE
RELIGION, IDENTITY AND THE CREATION OF SOCIAL CONTROL
Sustaining social control has always been a fundamental social problem as society metamorphoses (Obianjulu, 2014). Keel (2005) defined social control to be an existing institutional mechanism through which members of the society ensure that their members conform to prescribed conduct norms. Atere and Ajayi (2014) defined it to mean a way by which a society attempts to bring back its straying. They asserted that no society no matter how little could exist without some form or the other of social control. Social control is that part of society that establishes order and prevents disorder. It involves an attempt to ensure someone does or refrains from doing something with a view to maintaining order, regulating behavior and checking social maladjustment.
CHAPTER FOUR
RELIGION IN NIGERIA: FROM DETERMINANT TO SECULARIZED
Over time, religion has played a key role in directing the affairs of the people of the African continent, not just on the individual level, but also at the level of the collective (Okon, 2012). Balogun and Oladipupo (2013) wrote on the impact of religion in traditional African societies highlighting the level of dependence on the African traditional religion among individual members of society. In fact, it is not an uncommon phenomenon to hear of religious faithfuls seeking the counsel of the ifa oracle on their future endeavours, life chances and choices and the needed sacrifices to help attain their hearts’ desires. Moral uprightness irrespective of the chosen life path was demanded by the gods, and bestowing their favors on any individual of their choice was their prerogative.
The supremacy of religion was not as such limited to individual lives, as the control of the gods extended to general society and its institutions. In contemporary times, religion exerts the same powers in our daily individual and societal lives albeit in a different manner (Okon, 2012). On a daily basis at the very least we say one form of prayer or the other, our sense of morality is still guided by religion at least to some extent, we even oft-times accept the most obvious electoral malpractices as the will of God. In fact, our decisions on who to vote are often coloured by religious sentiments. An example is sufficed here:
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
The importance of religion in human society cannot be denied or under-estimated. So much is its importance that it often sets the boundaries between deviance and control, chaos and order, change and the maintenance of status quo. Social control is also an important part of society, and its continued presence ensures the continued existence of society. However, it is important to note that the paths and roles of both religion and social control and their institutions are intertwined and as such, a breakdown in one could lead to a breakdown in the other. Also, the paper looked at the rise of secularization and fanaticism in religion and points out that the continuous increases in both phenomena are brought about by changing socio-economic order albeit in different manners, hence, while on the one hand, religious secularization is brought about and perpetuated continuously by increasing beliefs in the socio-economic changes outside the religious belief system, religious fanaticism is occasioned on the other hand by an increased (oft-times newly-found) belief in the religious belief system, in spite of or because of, the socio- economic changes around, with both social phenomena pointing to the increasing influence of religion on society as opposed to the assertions of Marx and Durkheim. Nigeria therefore needs to find the balance between secularization and fanaticism to ensure that the influence of religion is not exploited to throw the nation into a state of anarchy.
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