Religion and Conflict

Individuals

Recognizing that religious action has an individual as well as a social component, Sigmund Freud locates the very origins of religion in a primordial conflict between a human being's instinctual impulses and the necessary restraints each person must impose on his or her expression to gain membership in an accepting and orderly social world. The gods and religion enter to compensate individuals “for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.” But religion at the same time disquiets them with its normative demands. In past ages, religious imperatives moved the likes of Arjuna, Siddhartha, Confucius, Muhammad, Ignatius Loyola, and countless others to disregard prevailing worldly or profane logics to exert themselves to conform the ways of the world to the demands of the sacred as they understood it. Similarly, in modern times, it is the felt force of compelling normative directives that, for example, oblige a pharmacist to refuse to honor a prescription for the “morning-after” contraceptive because of its putative abortifacient qualities.

Finally, religion as an agent of both social conflict and social integration at the level of individuals exists in Santeria as practiced among many of Latino/a heritage in the United States. Santeria had its origins in a syncretic amalgam of the religion of the Yoruba people of West Africa brought as slaves to Cuba and the Catholic religion that the Spanish slave owners imposed on them. Centuries later, carried on the waves of the Cuban diaspora in the latter half of the 20th century, Santeria's appeal widened to encompass other groups, particularly other Spanish-speaking U.S. immigrant communities. Taking refuge in the spells and magical practices of Bruharia, the dark side of Afro-Cuban religion, served to relieve tensions arising out of interpersonal disagreements and hostilities; and the traditional religious practices and meanings of Santeria, once established in the new land, served to restore a sense of cultural coherence to members of these communities amid the anomie of their marginalized social status.

Groups

When conflict and religion intersect at the level of communities embedded within larger, more encompassing societal configurations, it can occur either within such groups or between them.