The relationship between religious beliefs, organisations and social change, including religion as a conservative force and as a force for change (Weber, liberation theology, fundamentalism).

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to evaluate whether religion is a conservative force (maintaining the status quo) or a force for change, using Weber, liberation theology, the civil rights movement and fundamentalism. The trap in the wording is usually the word "always": a top answer shows religion can do both, depending on context.

Religion as a conservative force

"Conservative" here has two meanings, both of which the examiner expects you to handle:

• It defends traditional beliefs and values (for example on the family, marriage and sexual morality). Most major faiths uphold a particular moral order.
• It maintains the status quo and social stability. Functionalists see it promoting solidarity and value consensus; Marxists see it as ideology that legitimates inequality (the opium of the people, the divine right of kings); feminists see it upholding patriarchy through male-dominated texts and hierarchies.

On this view religion is a brake on change: it sanctifies existing arrangements and discourages challenge.

Religion as a force for change: Weber

Calvinists could not know if they were among the saved (predestination), which produced acute "salvation anxiety". Worldly success in a calling came to be read as a sign of God's favour, so Calvinists worked hard, lived frugally and reinvested rather than spent their profits, behaviour ideally suited to accumulating capital. Weber stressed that ideas can be a motor of social change, not merely a reflection of the economy as Marxists claim. He was careful to note other conditions were also needed (capitalism did not arise everywhere Calvinism existed, and existing technology and law mattered), so religion was a contributory, not sole, cause.

Religion as a force for change: liberation theology and civil rights

• Liberation theology: in 1960s and 1970s Latin America, sections of the Catholic Church combined Christianity with support for the poor and opposition to oppressive regimes, actively promoting change (a clergy that took the side of the powerless rather than the powerful).
• The US civil rights movement: the Black church, led by figures such as Martin Luther King, provided organisation, meeting places, moral authority and solidarity. Bruce sees it as an example of religion shaping change while acting as an "ideological resource", but he stresses it succeeded because it shared the wider society's values (challenging America to live up to its own ideals) rather than rejecting them.

Fundamentalism and evaluation

Fundamentalism (a literal return to sacred texts, an "us versus them" worldview, often using modern media) can mobilise believers against perceived threats from modernity, secularism and globalisation. Davie sees it partly as a defensive reaction to change. It can therefore be both a force for change (demanding a radical reordering of society) and a deeply conservative one (seeking to restore an imagined traditional order).

The balanced conclusion is that religion is neither inherently conservative nor radical: it can stabilise society or fuel resistance depending on the social context, the type of religion and how believers use it.