Culpabilisation as a religious function

Abstract

The author continues his study of the functions of religion. The first section is devoted to a description of the various approaches to a functional analysis of religion suggested by members of the Bielefeld School of Sociology (Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Hans Küng, Niklas Luhmann), by Thomas O’Dea, as well as by Russian experts: Yablokov, Tokarev, and Kagarov. In this context, the author studies the question regarding the functionality specific to religion, particularly in relation to magic. The author suggests that the post-modern paradigm allows him to define and describe a new and specific function of religion: that of culpabilisation. In order to explain and better define this function (that of sensing or placing guilt), the author turns to a study of the origins of the feelings of guilt and the way guilt is defined by semantics and metaphysics. Guilt feelings are described in the works of some of the foremost experts in the fi eld of twentieth century philosophy and theology: René Girard (anthropologist), Gilles Deleuse and Paul Ricoeur (philosophers), Karl Rahner (theologian) and Julia Kristeva (semiotician), together with concepts drawn from Freud (psycho-analytics) and Pitirim Sorokin (sociology). All these are representative of the post-modern paradigm and worked in the fields of classical or non-classical paradigms. The author concludes that religious culpabilisation precedes the institution of organized religion and the setting apart of a priesthood or professional clergy. Its development is set along the following logical chain of the development of phenomena: Soteriology — Eschatology — Hamartology — Theodicy — Culpabilisation.

Keywords

• Philosophy of Religion
• Sociology of Religion
• Functions of Religion
• Functional Analysis
• Guilt
• Sin