Chapter 12 Religion Test Bank

Chapter 12 Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. The earliest anthropologist to compare religious and spiritual beliefs around the world was E. B. Tylor. For him the heart of religious beliefs was the belief in
2. spirits.
3. magic.
4. the sacred.
5. totems.
6. Stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities are called
7. rituals.
8. magic.
9. ceremonies.
10. witchcraft.
11. The core of Anthony F.C. Wallace’s understanding of religion was belief in
12. supernatural things.
13. the afterlife.
14. Jesus.
15. God.
16. Geertz’s approach to religion is a style of analysis that looks at the underlying symbolic and cultural interconnections within a society; this is often referred to as
17. structural-functionalism.
18. neo-evolutionism.
19. symbolic anthropology.
20. the interpretive approach.
21. A key feature of religious beliefs and behavior is that they are rooted in
22. social behavior and social action.
23. phenomena.
24. historical documents.
25. dogma.
26. Which of the following is an example of American totemism?
27. The cross
28. Money
29. Beauty
30. Sports team mascots
31. A voodoo doll is a good illustration of
32. magic that follows the law of contagion.
33. magic that follows the law of similarity.
34. animism.
35. totemism.
36. In some Pentecostal and charismatic Christian religions, adherents experience an ecstatic religious happening (often associated with shamanism), which is known as
37. praying.
38. speaking in tongues.
39. pilgrimage.
40. meditation.
41. Anthropologist George Gmelch studied which sport where he found that players used a lot of magic?
42. Soccer
43. Basketball
44. Baseball
45. Hockey
46. To communicate the needs of the living to the spirit world, shamans may rely on
47. a spirit familiar.
48. a religious leader.
49. donations from local governments.
50. an agnostic guide.
51. Which of the following would be of least interest to an anthropologist studying symbols in Hindu weddings?
52. The clothing worn
53. The cost of the party
54. The decorations
55. The layout of the event
56. Religiosity in the United States has
57. all but disappeared since the 1960s.
58. decreased since the 1960s.
59. increased since the 1960s.
60. remained stable since the 1960s.
61. All of the following is true about fundamentalists except
62. they are threatened by secularization.
63. they perceive themselves as fighting for a return to “proper” gender roles, sexuality, and education.
64. they are violent extremists who are scientifically illiterate.
65. they are zealous, committed, and firmly convinced that they have been chosen to carry out the will of a deity.
66. __________ is not considered to be a world religion.
67. Hinduism
68. Buddhism
69. Candomblé
70. Islam
71. Marriage is often understood as
72. magic.
73. an expression of fundamentalism.
74. a religion.
75. a rite of passage.
76. Beliefs get most of their power through
77. magic.
78. repeatedly being socially enacted.
79. the law of contagion.
80. fundamentalist actions.
81. All the following are monotheistic religions except
82. Judaism.
83. Christianity.
84. Islam.
85. Hinduism.
86. A shaman is a religious leader who primarily communicates through
87. a ritual trance.
88. sympathetic magic.
89. persuasion and charisma.
90. formal social institutions.
91. What is a life cycle ritual that marks a person’s or group of persons’ transition from one social state to another?
92. Magic
93. Animism
94. Totemism
95. Rite of passage
96. People who belong to conservative religious movements that advocate a return to traditional principles are called
97. believers.
98. practitioners.
99. faithful.
100. fundamentalists.
101. What do anthropologists call a person who belongs to a religious movement that advocates a return to traditional values?
102. An animist
103. A fundamentalist
104. An interpretivist
105. A monotheist
106. A limitation of Wallace’s definition of religion is that it is
107. too flexible.
108. not ethnographically informed.
109. too static.
110. too variable.
111. Which of the following is not a common emblem in totemism?
112. Meteorological features
113. Places
114. Plants
115. Buildings
116. An example of the law of contagion is
117. throwing darts at a picture of your enemy.
118. creating a voodoo doll.
119. casting a love spell using a shirt of the person you have a crush on.
120. dressing like your idol.
121. Which of the following would be of least interest to an anthropologist studying symbols in high-profile American funerals?
122. The music played
123. The location of the memorial
124. The order of the ceremony
125. The news coverage of the event
126. How have American churches responded to social change in the last forty years?
127. They have ignored it.
128. They have challenged it.
129. They have passively adapted.
130. They have asserted the separation between church and state.
131. Which of the following is not true about how anthropology interprets how and why somebody would become a suicide bomber?
132. The person is an evildoer.
133. The person is a member of a community with a particular model of and for reality.
134. There is a social support system that helps shape the person’s attitudes.
135. There is ideological support for viewing self-sacrifice as virtuous.
136. A common element among fundamentalists is a
137. desire to be violent.
138. disregard for the law and for science.
139. commitment to what they envision as a purer way of life.
140. superficial understanding of religious texts.
141. Which of the following is not a key feature of rituals?
142. They are repetitive.
143. They are stylized.
144. They hold special significance.
145. They are religious.
146. Which approach to religious beliefs and behaviors do the textbook authors feel is most effective at explaining why people engage in religious behaviors, especially behaviors that do not directly benefit the individual, such as the actions of Jonathan Daniels or Tom Coleman?
147. The idea that religion began with a belief in spirits
148. The notion that religion concerns beliefs and behaviors about the supernatural
149. The idea that religion is a system of symbols
150. The idea that religion is a system of social action
151. How did Clifford Geertz argue that religion could be best understood?
152. Religion is a system of symbols.
153. Religion is meant to maintain order in a community.
154. Religion is a response to political oppression.
155. Religion is a substitute for true happiness.
156. The Pentecostal and charismatic Christian tradition of speaking in tongues is an example of what common religious practice?
157. Ritual trance
158. Polytheism
159. Imitative magic
160. Initiation ritual
161. Which of the following is not a characteristic of fundamentalists, according to the Fundamentalism Project at University of Chicago?
162. They are threatened by secularization.
163. They find meaning and purpose from political and military efforts to defend their beliefs.
164. They are only found in Western religions.
165. They define themselves in relation to what they are not: outsiders, modernizers, and moderates.
166. Which of the following is an example of imitative magic?
167. A voodoo doll
168. A rite of passage
169. The appearance of ghosts
170. The public reading of a sacred religious text
171. Which of the following is not a ritual?
172. Tooth-brushing
173. Taking communion
174. Eating tacos every Tuesday
175. Learning a new language
176. Which of the following is true of the dominant world religions?
177. They rely on fundamentalism.
178. They are monotheistic.
179. They embrace science.
180. They are not secular.
181. Religious ideas are typically associated with beliefs about the supernatural, but what argument can be used to explain the beliefs and worldviews of physicists or geneticists, who may consider themselves nonbelievers?
182. Most religions are really no more than a particular world view.
183. It would be unfair to leave scientist out of the afterlife, even if they do not believe in it.
184. Nonbelievers may not have a religion, but deep down they must believe in something.
185. We don’t need to study physicists or geneticists because they are well educated and it would be better to learn from their experiences.
186. Which of the theories of totemism discussed in the text could help us understand the importance of mascots in American sports?
187. Mascots are not religious icons, so religious theories cannot help us understand them.
188. Mascots are symbols of the team and celebrate team identity.
189. Sports fans are so enthusiastic about their sports that they think that their mascots actually are spiritually connected with their teams.
190. Mascots are organized on vertical poles as well.
191. Which of the following is an example of magic, as defined by the textbook authors?
192. Pulling a rabbit out of a hat
193. Fortune-telling at the state fair
194. Using a “lucky” bat in baseball to win the game
195. Individuals’ abilities to walk on hot coals during initiation rites
196. If you were designing a study of secular worldviews in Europe, what would you be most likely to focus on?
197. The role of the Vatican in Italian politics
198. The emphasis on the scientific method in school curricula
199. The popularity of wine for toasting major lifecycle events
200. The continued tradition of holding funerals in churches and other houses of worship

True/False

1. For early anthropologists, primitive religions were based on a fundamental error in thinking.
2. True
3. False
4. Beliefs get most of their power from being socially enacted repeatedly through rituals and other religious behaviors.
5. True
6. False
7. Most anthropologists currently see the traditional religions of small-scale tribal societies as “primitive,” based on simpleminded ideas not linked to reality.
8. True
9. False
10. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam became state religions, whose religious message and ritual supported the government of the state.
11. True
12. False
13. The prophet Mohammad had a Christian wife.
14. True
15. False
16. Shamans usually act simultaneously as political leaders and healers in their communities.
17. True
18. False
19. Buddhism is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic.
20. True
21. False
22. Secular rituals that celebrate the state or nation, particular occupations, or other identities may achieve many of the same ends as religious rituals.
23. True
24. False
25. Animism refers to the belief that inanimate objects such as trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers are animated by spiritual forces or beings.
    1. True
    2. False
26. Witchcraft refers to any magical ritual that relies on supernatural powers to produce its outcome without working through a specific supernatural being such as a spirit, demon, or deity.
    1. True
    2. False
27. Religion is a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life.
    1. True
    2. False
28. Anthropomorphism is the system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species.
    1. True
    2. False
29. The religious leader who communicates the needs of the living with the spirit world, usually through some form of ritual trance or other altered state of consciousness, is called a shaman.
    1. True
    2. False
30. Clifford Geertz proposed an interpretive approach to religion, arguing that religion was a system of supernatural practices.
    1. True
    2. False
31. A key feature of fundamentalist movements is the willingness to engage in direct political action to defend their ideas.
    1. True
    2. False

Short Answer

1. Describe Anthony F.C. Wallace’s definition of religion as beliefs and behaviors and compare that to E.B. Tylor’s notion that the core of religion is the belief in spirits.
2. Explain the notion of magic in baseball and why baseball players would be particularly prone to using various kinds of personal magic.
3. Religious rituals are powerful ways of creating the sense of belonging and being part of a special group. How are rituals enhanced by making them frequent events (such as a daily ritual), and how can the meaning of these rituals be made more powerful by having them be almost unique events (such as the pope’s visit to Brazil)?
4. If you were working with administrators at your school to encourage college students to feel more connected to the academic goals of your college or university, what kind of ritual might you propose that might enhance the feeling of belonging?
5. Explain how symbols are a part of religious behavior and how symbols are used to explain human interaction. Provide examples to support your explanation.
6. Discuss the concept of myth as discussed in the text and how it operates in different approaches to the study of religion.
7. Discuss the significance of studying belief and religion cross culturally. What effect does this have on our understanding of human culture? In your answer, be sure to define religion and discuss its connections with other aspects of the human experience.
8. Define and describe of rites of passage and the role of pilgrimage in rites of passage. How do these rituals interact with each other?
9. Compare and contrast totemism and shamanism, providing examples to show the similarities and differences.
10. Describe how religions have become localized in an ever increasingly globalized world.

Short Answer Key

1. Describe Anthony F.C. Wallace’s definition of religion as beliefs and behaviors and compare that to E.B. Tylor’s notion that the core of religion is the belief in spirits.
   1. How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?
   2. One of the major figures of this period was Anthony F. C. Wallace, who had studied religious change among the Seneca, one of the Iroquois tribes in upstate New York (1956, 1970). For Wallace, religious change could be observed most easily in the changing religious ceremonies and rituals (stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities). He recognized that these rituals made sense only in terms of religious beliefs. His definition of religion became standard in anthropology because it linked beliefs with rituals: “beliefs and rituals concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces” (Wallace 1966:5).
   3. Early anthropologists like Edward B. Tylor largely saw all “primitive” societies as having a “primitive” religion. While anthropologists today reject the notion that some peoples are more “primitive” and others more “civilized,” it is clear that societies with simple technologies and small populations traditionally had very different religions from those that have formed in states with centralized governments and more sophisticated technologies. But there is no evidence that one form inevitably evolves into another, as the early anthropologists believed.
2. Explain the notion of magic in baseball and why baseball players would be particularly prone to using various kinds of personal magic.
   1. How Do Rituals Work?
   2. Americans tend to believe that modernization has eliminated magical thought in our culture. Yet many of the elements observed in non-Western societies also occur in contemporary America. In his study of baseball players, for example, anthropologist George Gmelch (1978) noted that players often have lucky jerseys, good-luck fetishes, or other objects that become charms. For these players, ordinary objects acquire power by being connected to exceptionally hot batting or pitching streaks. These charms follow the law of similarity. For three months during a winning season, one pitcher Gmelch interviewed followed the exact same routine: at lunch he went to the same restaurant and had two glasses of iced tea and a tuna-fish sandwich, and for an hour before the game he wore the same sweatshirt and jockstrap he had worn the first day of the streak. He was afraid that changing anything he had done before the first winning game might produce a bad result.
3. Religious rituals are powerful ways of creating the sense of belonging and being part of a special group. How are rituals enhanced by making them frequent events (such as a daily ritual), and how can the meaning of these rituals be made more powerful by having them be almost unique events (such as the pope’s visit to Brazil)?
   1. How Do Rituals Work?
   2. The most important type of ritual is the rite of passage, a life-cycle ritual that marks a person’s (or a group’s) transition from one social state to another. In 1909 the French sociologist Arnold van Gennep (1960) outlined the structure of rituals that marked that passage of individuals from one status to another. Rites of passage include marriage rituals, in which individuals change status from being single to being married, and rituals that mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. Initiations are common around the world, even in industrial societies such as ours that carry out such rituals in “sweet sixteen parties” for young women, when we graduate from school, and the like. Funerals represent another rite of passage; they focus on the deceased but are largely about the transition survivors will experience. In “Thinking Like an Anthropologist: Examining Rites of Passage,” we explore the link between symbols and the construction of meaning in two American rituals: funerals and graduations.
4. If you were working with administrators at your school to encourage college students to feel more connected to the academic goals of your college or university, what kind of ritual might you propose that might enhance the feeling of belonging?
   1. How Do Rituals Work?
   2. The most important type of ritual is the rite of passage, a life-cycle ritual that marks a person’s (or a group’s) transition from one social state to another. In 1909 the French sociologist Arnold van Gennep (1960) outlined the structure of rituals that marked that passage of individuals from one status to another. Rites of passage include marriage rituals, in which individuals change status from being single to being married, and rituals that mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. Initiations are common around the world, even in industrial societies such as ours that carry out such rituals in “sweet sixteen parties” for young women, when we graduate from school, and the like. Funerals represent another rite of passage; they focus on the deceased but are largely about the transition survivors will experience. In “Thinking Like an Anthropologist: Examining Rites of Passage,” we explore the link between symbols and the construction of meaning in two American rituals: funerals and graduations.
5. Explain how symbols are a part of religious behavior and how symbols are used to explain human interaction. Provide examples to support your explanation.
   1. How Do Rituals Work?
   2. For anthropologist Victor Turner (1967, 1969), all rituals invoke symbols that can convey the underlying meanings of the ritual. Ritual symbols can consist of objects, colors, actions, events, or words. Pilgrimage, which is a type of ritual in which a journey is made to a destination of spiritual importance, involves embodied movement over a long distance (see “A World in Motion: Contemporary Pilgrimage and the Camino de Santiago”). Often symbols point to, suggest, or take meaning from myths or sacred texts known to participants, such as the cross or the wine and wafers in Christian church services. When American brides wear white, they are symbolically expressing their purity, whereas when Chinese wear white at a funeral they are expressing their grief. What is common throughout these examples is that rituals create solidarity and meaning for participants and represent tradition for a group of people.
6. Discuss the concept of myth as discussed in the text and how it operates in different approaches to the study of religion.
   1. How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?
   2. To make sense of the exotic religious beliefs of non-Western cultures, the ­British anthropologist Sir Edward B. Tylor (1871) suggested that religion had to do with belief in spiritual beings. For him, primitive religions were based on a fundamental error in thinking. He reasoned that people in all societies had dreams, but the so-called primitive peoples had misinterpreted their dreams as reality, transforming the characters in their dreams into souls or spirits. Tylor called such beliefs in spirits animism, which refers to the belief that inanimate objects such as trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers are animated by spiritual forces or beings. For him the ideas that trees and rocks might have souls and that carved images might contain spirits were just other examples of this same “primitive” misunderstanding. Tylor also reasoned that as societies evolved and became more complex, the supernatural beings they believed in gave way first to demigods and mythical heroes, then to gods and goddesses, then to a single, all-­powerful God, and finally to science. Although many anthropologists later came to reject Tylor’s evolutionary theories, his basic approach remained influential in anthropology for many decades.
   3. By the 1950s, anthropologists in the United States had long abandoned the idea that American Indians and other non-Western peoples were “primitive.” They had also come to accept, as Paul Radin argued in his influential book ­Primitive Man as Philosopher (1927), that there was nothing simple-minded in the myths, legends, and religious practices of tribal peoples. When American anthropologists began to look at how American Indian religions had changed—and continued to change—in the context of white Euro-American expansion and domination, they saw systematic shifts in Indian thinking to make sense of changing times (Figure 12.1).
7. Discuss the significance of studying belief and religion cross culturally. What effect does this have on our understanding of human culture? In your answer, be sure to define religion and discuss its connections with other aspects of the human experience.
   1. How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?
   2. Western intellectuals and social scientists have historically found the subject of religion problematic. When scholars in the nineteenth century confronted peoples around the world who held mystical views, most considered these ideas to be nonscientific mumbo-jumbo, and their adherents to be people of limited intellectual capacity. But by the 1870s, when anthropology was emerging as an academic discipline, scholars began to look systematically for theories that would help them understand religious beliefs. Anthropologists came to recognize the cultural importance of religious beliefs early, although theories differed on how to make sense of them. In this section we consider four different definitions of religion that anthropologists have suggested, several of which are still commonly used today. Among these is our own approach to religion that builds on the others. In our view, the most effective way to think of religion is as a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life that relate to ultimate issues of humankind’s existence.
8. Define and describe of rites of passage and the role of pilgrimage in rites of passage. How do these rituals interact with each other?
   1. How Do Rituals Work?
   2. The most important type of ritual is the rite of passage, a life-cycle ritual that marks a person’s (or a group’s) transition from one social state to another. In 1909 the French sociologist Arnold van Gennep (1960) outlined the structure of rituals that marked that passage of individuals from one status to another. Rites of passage include marriage rituals, in which individuals change status from being single to being married, and rituals that mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. Initiations are common around the world, even in industrial societies such as ours that carry out such rituals in “sweet sixteen parties” for young women, when we graduate from school, and the like. Funerals represent another rite of passage; they focus on the deceased but are largely about the transition survivors will experience. In “Thinking Like an Anthropologist: Examining Rites of Passage,” we explore the link between symbols and the construction of meaning in two American rituals: funerals and graduations.
9. Compare and contrast totemism and shamanism, providing examples to show the similarities and differences.
   1. What Forms Does Religion Take?
   2. Early anthropologists studying American Indian societies observed that people were identified with particular animals, often claiming to be descended from these animals. These people indicated their clans, lineages, tribes, or other social groups with certain revered emblems, usually animals, plants, places, and geographic or meteorological features. Anthropologists usually refer to these emblems as totems, and totemism as the system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species. Totems help create social cohesiveness by stressing group identity, focusing group and private rituals on totems. Some Native American societies simultaneously employed color symbolism, directional symbols, and species as totems.
   3. As early as the sixteenth century, European travelers from Russia and central Europe encountered tribes in Siberia whose religious rituals involved spiritual leaders called shamans, religious leaders who communicate the needs of the living with the spirit world, usually through some form of ritual trance—a semiconscious state typically brought on by hypnosis, ritual drumming and singing, or hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline or peyote. These specialists were not political leaders but were focused on healing and ensuring the health and prosperity of the community, using drum rituals to connect with the spirits.
10. Describe how religions have become localized in an ever increasingly globalized world.
    1. What Forms Does Religion Take?
    2. World religions have spread because their actual practice is flexible and adaptable to local social dynamics, beliefs, and practices. To take an extreme example, consider the example of serpent handling among certain minority Pentecostal Christian sects in the Appalachian region of the United States. It may come as a surprise to most Americans that their compatriots might handle venomous serpents during rituals that are characterized by loud music and dancing that would seem to agitate snakes. Indeed, most Christians would judge this practice harshly as backwards or ignorant, even though a Bible passage in the Book of Mark notes that a sign of God’s grace is the handling of serpents among his followers.