Garhard Lenksi Religion

Garhard Lenksi’s idea of sociocultural evolution corresponds to religion in various different ways. As a society evolves from one stage to another, that society’s values also change. This leads to new types of religions as well as changes in the amount religious inequality. The types of values that exists in a certain sociocultural stage determines the type of religion that the society will have during that stage.

In a hunter-gatherer society, people are dependent on nature for survival. Thus, they believe in nature gods. Since the people are also nomadic, there is very little religious inequality. Thus, women and men both can have the same religious positions. This means that people are allowed to believe in any god.

In a pastoral society, people use animals for major sources to make food and clothing. Thus, animal domestication becomes very important in society. This causes the pantheon to consist mostly of animal gods. People are still nomadic and this means that religious inequality has changed slightly. “Women now are typically not shamans or religious leaders” (Alvarez, 2014). However, goddesses have been created to reflect the importance of women.

Thus, a majority of gods in the pantheon is related to agriculture. Furthermore, people also start to live in a specific place instead of continuing to be nomadic. Eventually, women were treated as property so they began to lose their influence on religion.

The mid-agrarian stage is very similar to the early-agrarian stage. However, theocracy begins to occur. Thus, “a class of religious ruling authorities [begins] to develop.” (Alvarez, 2014). Theocracy causes the level of social inequality begins to significantly