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.

In an early agrarian society, people depend on farming for survival.

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

increase.
During the late agrarian stage, people began to care more about conquering territories. “This expansionist tendency is reflected in the development of salvation religions” (Alvarez, 2014). They refuse to follow other type of religions. They were also monotheistic.
In an industrial society, there is less farming and more industrialization. Education starts to become more important and religious democracy begins to occur. Eventually, industrial societies become post-industrial. In a post-industrial society, there is more religious democracy. For example, “women begin to be involved in religious leadership positions again” (Alvarez, 2014).The main difference between these two societies is secularism, “the growth of non-religious aspects of social life” (Alvarez, 2014). This growth is found more in post-industrial societies.
The relationship between Lenski’s idea and religion can be used to create the implication that there will be a greater diversity of religions in the future. This is due to the fact that new values can be created. For example, “immigration from many [countries] …and the increasing popularity of fundamentalist organizations should increase as well as diversify [religious character]” (Macionis, 565). Immigration and the spread of ideas will eventually lead to new types of religions.
Religions are closely related to sociocultural evolutionary stages, because they reflect the values of the society that they are found in. These stages can also be related to religious inequality, because the amount of inequality that a society has is determined by the type of lifestyle the people have. Since more religions are created as people develop new values, there is the possibility that there will be more types of religions in the future.