Religion, Family, And Kinship Research Paper

Most of those who have written about the institution of the family comment upon its resilience. Although a variety of family types have been in evidence in different historical periods and societies, families have always existed in order to create and strengthen alliances between groups and to provide a suitable location for reproduction and the nurture of children. A small family unit may incorporate a single parent and child, with larger units incorporating several generations of adults including siblings, and their children. In some societies the idea of family has referred to all those who live in a household, including pseudokin and servants. Kinship, though some have limited its definition to ties of blood, is generally held to refer to systems of both descent and alliance, and to both biological and social relationships. Anthropologists who have researched kinship have been interested, for example, in how certain groups have sought to maintain their blood-line through the generations, or have organized the family to pass down wealth through the male line, in how some groups have developed kinship arrangements to ensure rights over children through the control of women, and how others have used marriage as a means of creating powerful new kinship bonds. Such studies have often involved understanding how religious ideas or ritual practices have been used to reinforce or symbolize such arrangements. Arnold van Gennep, for example, in his famous study of rites of passage published in 1960 [1908], showed how a TurkoMongolian group called the Bashkir used rituals to mark the important economic and social aspects of marriage. He described the extended visiting and eating rituals associated with the payment by the groom’s family of the bride price, and showed how a lengthy game of hide and seek on the marriage day signified the loss of a daughter to one family and her gain by another.

Social scientists have also shown how religious ideas and practices have reinforced common conceptions of kinship and family life. Taking the example of the Christian Right in America in the 1980s, they have shown how religious groups were able to contribute to the formation of a popular family ideal. They have shown, however, that this ideal—of a nuclear family comprised of a heterosexual married couple with children—is not the traditional institution its supporters believed it to be so much as a postmodern fantasy. ‘The family is dead, long live our families,’ a phrase used by Judith Stacey, a feminist sociologist, points to the redundancy of this popular ideal in the face of the complex reality of historical and living families in different social settings. How other religious groups have contributed, not only to reinforcing, but also to challenging ideas about the family, will be the subject of section 1.5.

1. The Role Of Religion In The Organization Of Kinship And The Family

1.1 Kinship And Inheritance

Religious ideas, myths, and practices have had a role in many societies in unholding social institutions, and many social scientists have sought to understand this. One example of this is the Indian caste system, which captured the attention of Max Weber and later anthropologists such as Louis Dumont. Weber held that there was a necessary relationship between caste and religion in India, that without caste there was no Hindu. He drew this conclusion because he saw that the religious rites and duties of Hindus were related to their social rank through a system of closed status groups or castes. These were different to tribes and guilds by virtue of their rules regarding marriage and eating. In particular, Weber noted the importance of the dominant group, the Brahmins, a priestly caste, around whom the entire system was organized. He recognized, however, that the modern caste system had grown to incorporate castes comprised of religious groups other than Hindus, and also suggested that it was severely shaken if not undermined by the challenge of modernism.

Later scholars considered aspects of the caste system in more detail. Dumont focused on hierarchy, examining the use of rules and practices concerning purity and pollution in distinguishing and ranking different castes. Others challenged his view, suggesting that those able to wield power in the system were not necessarily those who were most ritually pure. Most scholars have accepted some kind of relationship between religion and caste, however, acknowledging the role of scripture (especially the Laws of Manu), the function of the Brahmins in authorizing the system, the role of ritual in purification, and the part played by religious groups in both manipulating caste for advantage and challenging it.

Just as Indian kinship arrangements were legitimized by religious texts and commentators, so where those in other societies What came to be understood as the Confucian family ideal—hsiao, the virtue governing family relationships—was first prescribed in the classical texts of ancient China such as the Book of Changes and the Book of Rites. Within Islam, the family was privileged above other social institutions in the Qur’an and in later Islamic legal writings.

That European Catholicism reinforced ideas of feudal kinship and the family has been shown by the sociologist Bryan Turner among others. Developing the historical materialist ideas of Friedrich Engels on the family, he stated that the teachings of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages on sexuality were important for reinforcing the norms of monogamous marriage and the control of women’s sexual behavior. These norms, along with laws concerning inheritance through the male line, enabled dominant feudal families to ensure the stable transmission of property from one generation to the next and to avoid the dilution of the estate’s wealth through illegitimacy. The Church further served this system through its Religious Orders which were often a destination for those excluded from inheritance, such as younger sons and unwanted daughters.

Religious teachings have played a part in social control at many times and in many societies. Women have often been the focus for this because of the importance of their reproductive role. For example, within Islam, polyandry (a wife taking more than one husband at a time) is prohibited, whereas polygyny is accepted, with the proviso that a husband should be able to provide equally for all his wives (a maximum of four) and children. This may be explained biologically because a woman’s reproductive capacity is limited by the gestation period of the embryo, whereas a man may father multiple children simultaneously, thus reproducing his blood-line several times over. Socially, it may be explained by the fact that polygyny was the norm in Arabia at the time of Muhammad. Prevailing social practice was endorsed by the Qur’an, and, since that time, some Muslim marriages have been polygamous, particularly in African countries where polygyny was prevalent before the arrival of Islam. Many voices, including religious ones, have spoken out against this practice, but its place in Islamic scripture is unalterable given that the Qur’an is Allah’s revealed word.

1.2 Marriage

The teachings and rituals associated with marriage are indicative of the value attributed by religions to the family as a significant institution. The family is given legal privilege in Islam, and in Judaism, and Sikhism it is of central importance. In Christianity, the family competes with the Church for priority, and, in Buddhism, with monastic alternatives. The presence of the ascetic life—lived alone or in community—in many religions challenges the adequacy of the family as the best place for spiritual progress, liberation, or salvation. In two modern, global sectarian movements, the Church of the Latter Day Saints and the Unification Church, the family is not only prioritized socially, but is of central theological importance in defining the nature of both the cosmos and divine– human relationships.

The social meaning of marriage is the alliance between two individuals and often between the families or clans of which they are a part. To avoid incestuous relationships, all societies have rules about who may marry whom. In many countries marriage alliances are legitimized in law. Religious understandings of marriage differ, although they all build upon these basic social requirements. In Judaism and Islam, marriage is understood as a contract divinely sanctioned by God, while in Christianity it is a sacrament. In Hinduism, it marks the beginning of a stage of life. Rituals of marriage often symbolize the social and religious ideas embodied by tradition. For example, the exchange of rings, the use of a marriage canopy, the act of circumambulation—together around a fire or of one partner around the other—and the sharing of garlands or food are symbolic of the nature of the marriage relationship, the intention of the partners, and, in the Jewish case of the breaking of a glass, of the fragility of the institution.

Religions have gone beyond these definitions and symbols to reinforce prevalent social ideas about marriage in their teachings, as the case of polygyny in Islam showed. Cousin marriage too is endorsed by Shar’iah or Islamic law, and is also accepted in Australian traditional religions, in order to maintain close, stable relationships and to give sanction to the retention of property within the group. Hindus, though expected to marry within their caste, are prohibited from marrying someone with a common grandparent, thus ruling out close cousin marriages. Arranged marriages, where parents or guardians select marriage partners for sons and daughters, are not obligatory in Hinduism or Sikhism, but they have become a social norm recognized by the majority of Hindus and Sikhs if not always adhered to by them.

Sexual partnerships outside marriage, both heterosexual and homosexual, have frequently been the subject of religious injunctions, often constituting a taboo or ritual prohibition. The breaking of marriage bonds or divorce, similarly, has been an issue where religious teachings have contributed to social control. The use of the talaq or marriage repudiation in Islam and of the get or bill of divorce in Judaism, both practices which endorse the rights of the male party over the female, have caused consternation among activists campaigning either for equal rights or simply for fairness in situations of relationship breakdown. However, both of these religions have made some provision for the property rights of women during marriage and after divorce, or the death of their husbands, in Judaism through the ketubah or marriage contract, and Islam through the mahr or dowry provided by the husband. In contrast to these two religions which, owing to their contractual view of marriage, have endorsed divorce, Catholic Christianity has eschewed it, seeing it as the breaking of a sacrament. Christian denominations in the West in the twentieth century, in the face of the increasing divorce rate, sought to reassert the value of marriage and to encourage reconciliation in the case of marriage breakdown. They were often divided on the question of whether second marriages should be sanctioned.

1.3 Roles And Relationships

The biological functions normally associated with the social unit of the family are reproduction, nurture of children, and preservation and control of fertile adults, particularly women. At different times and places, a variety of social arrangements have been in operation to facilitate these. Responsibilities for children, whether the provision of food and other resources, or of nurture, have been variously divided among men and women, parents and grandparents, though women have had a mothering role in most societies. Perhaps the most commonly recognized family roles have been those of mother, father, children, grandparents, siblings, and ancestors. Religious beliefs and practices have played an important part in endorsing such family roles and the duties associated with them. Roles have often been conferred through rituals, affirmed by religious teachings, and sometimes mirrored and authorized by mythic accounts of divine family roles.

The use of ritual in celebrating entry into different life-stages, conferring appropriate roles, and ensuring group membership, continuity, and loyalty has been the subject of anthropological debate. Functionalists, such as Durkheim and Malinowski, and later, Rappaport, stressed the importance of ritual for social integration, whereas Edmund Leach held the view that rituals reflected conflicting interpretations and often contained the seeds of social instability while legitimizing a particular power structure. This ambiguity was also acknowledged by Victor Turner who held that the symbolic complexity of rituals made space for competing interpretations, thus enabling solidarity to be achieved without compromise. These scholarly perspectives were significant for understanding many types of ritual, including those related to the family. For example, in his study of the Ndembu of Zambia, Turner described the various symbolic meanings of the milk tree, for girls at the time of initiation, for their mothers, and for the society of which they were a part. It symbolized breast milk and the mother–child relationship, the exclusion of men from women’s experience, but also the separation of the growing daughter from her mother. Turner suggested that this tree constituted a dominant symbol which enabled the expression both of dissonant interests and of the solidarity of the group as a whole.

Religious rituals and symbols, then, may sometimes affirm divergent viewpoints about family roles and relationships for the social good. Religious teachings, however, are often less ambiguous, constituting normative statements about family life and the roles and duties of mothers, fathers, and children. Householder life has been prescribed by religious and moral texts in many societies. A nineteenth century example of this may be found in the schoolbooks produced during the Meiji period in Japan when the imperial ideology of State Shinto was gaining its fullest expression. The emperor was held to be the supreme father or head of house, guiding his family, with each individual family being a branch of the same tree, following the same structure. This patriarchal ideal, which came to apply also to corporate families, was authorized by the Shinto myth of the sun goddess, Amaterasu-o-mikami, of whom the emperor was held to be a direct descendent.

A more recent example, which builds on earlier Confucian family ideals, may be witnessed in the teachings of the Unification Church, a movement which began in Korea in the 1950s and was popularized in the West in the 1970s. According to the Divine Principle, the movement’s founder, Sun Myung Moon, and his wife are the true parents of the world. They seek to heal the broken family, bringing people together regardless of social or religious background. With God as the father of all creation, Jesus as the true spiritual father, and the holy spirit as the true spiritual mother, the movement mirrors this divine family in the human family, with God as the focal point, the male as head of the family, and the mother subject to her husband. With the essential fourth component, their children, they are expected to prepare, through active missionary service, for the second advent. The Unification Church is an example of a religious group for whom the family ideal is central in its theological, ethical, and social teachings, and for whom family relationships are the model for all other relationships.

1.4 The Significance Of The Family For Religions

Having seen how religious ideas, practices, and institutions have contributed to forming and legitimizing kinship arrangements, marriage practices, and family roles and relationships, the significance of the family for the maintenance and continuity of religions will now be considered. As was seen in the case of the Unification Church, the family motif has, at times, been an organizing principle for ordering and giving meaning to both divine–human relationships and social life. Other late-modern religious movements, taking their inspiration from Christian rather than Confucian models, have likewise focused on the family as the central expression of community life. The Church of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, has seen the eternal family unit (including ancestors) as the primary institution for guiding the individual in his or her spiritual journey. Parents are believed to have duties, not only to care for children, but also to ensure their religious nurture and to confer priesthood upon them. As spiritual progress depends on membership of an eternal family, sex and procreation outside marriage are prohibited, and an active interest is taken in family history and genealogy. The Church’s theological and ethical view of the family has led to particular family patterns developing among its members, e.g., a low marital age, large families, support of elders within families, a low divorce rate, and conservative sexual values.

Some Christian denominations and sects depend upon commitment to the family to maintain the group and pass on its beliefs and practices from one generation to the next. In the nineteenth century, Protestant sects in the New World such as the Hutterites, the Mennonites, and the Amish ensured their continuity through the generations primarily by means of the social control of families, marriage within the sect, ethical conservatism, and the religious nurture of children within the family. For some peoples, religious transmission across the generations has been related to ethnicity, itself determined by kinship arrangements, intergroup marriage, and close family ties. Despite having differing myths of origin and notions of identity, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians have been defined by their relationship to a land or a people, and have carried their religious ancestry as a mark of birth. The family has been important for these groups in preserving biological and social ties with others in the group and with ancestors, and in maintaining the group for the future. Current concerns in Jewish and Zoroastrian communities about out-marriage are an example of the importance of family continuity. Additionally, debates within all these groups about the validity of the conversion of outsiders are indicative of the stress they have placed upon ethnic exclusivity. Within Orthodox Judaism, for example, Jewish identity and culture are only transmittable by the mother. If a Jewish woman marries a non-Jew, their offspring may return in the future to the Orthodox Jewish fold; if a Jewish man marries a non-Jew, their offspring may not. This represents an end to the Jewish line. Liberal, Reform, and Conservative Jews have a range of views on this and on the subject of conversion to Judaism.

The family is a major bearer of religious tradition. A new generation of young people may be brought into the life of a faith community by parents and grandparents, thus ensuring the survival of the religion. However, this process of religious reproduction introduces mutation and adaptation. New generations and changing times often require the reinterpretation of traditions, and the introduction of innovation, even if this is within existing religious frameworks. Many scholars of religions have been keen to understand intergenerational religious change, and to examine the methods of religious socialization used within various religions at different times. It can be instructive, for example, to compare the way in which one religious tradition is transmitted differently by families in different locations through variants on the same story, the use of local languages and rituals, and the involvement of different family members. Traditions surrounding the birth of Jesus in Christianity, for example, are celebrated and passed on in quite different ways by Christian families across the globe.

1.5 Contemporary Religious Views Of The Family

Nineteen ninety four was the United Nations International Year of the Family, and the institution of the family and the values associated with it were high on the political agenda in many countries. There was little agreement, however, about these issues. In America and Europe, some supported the nuclear family ideal outlined earlier, of two married parents with several children; others hailed what they called the ‘postmodern family,’ which was variously constituted of one or more adults of either gender and sexual orientation in a parental role with children. Realistically, in global terms, family types were still more open, including joint and multigenerational families, war-torn and other divided families, families with foster children, and childless families. Religious institutions were often asked for their views on the nature of the family and family values. What were their views on divorce, broken families, remarriage, and the postmodern family? What about birth control within the family, including fertility treatment? Did they have a view on gay and lesbian parenting? What did they think was the effect of women working on the family unit, especially on the socialization of children? A variety of views were offered, some traditional, some liberal, depending on the religious institution or movement and the denomination or group within it. The Catholic Church, for example, under the leadership of Pope John Paul II, continued to articulate a conservative position on marriage, the nature of the family, and sexual ethics. However, in practice, many Catholics contravened Church teachings. Some Reform and Progressive Jewish and liberal Christian groups made provisions to accept cohabitation, second marriages, and gay and lesbian unions, stressing the need for mutual support and care within partnerships and family groupings rather than traditional prescriptions about the inviolability of marriage and sexual ethics.

From the 1970s, the major collective voice for change regarding the family within religious institutions worldwide was that of women. Informed by the research and critiques of feminists, religious women from all over the world called for family friendly teachings and practices, and respect for women’s gifts and roles. In many countries, religious women challenged the law on family issues. In India, feminists fought for women’s right to work outside the family, women’s property and inheritance rights, and campaigned against dowry and female infanticide, all issues influenced by traditional Hindu and Muslim norms regarding women’s roles and expectations.

Women were also able to challenge traditional views of the family by forging new religious roles for themselves or founding alternative religious movements. In Africa, in some traditional religions and new independent churches, women, through the acquisition of spiritual power, were able to circumvent the normal social requirements of wife and mother. Susan Starr Sered, in her research on religions dominated by women, gave examples of independent women who had broken with tradition and established new religious families and communities. She also showed that it was not only contemporary Western spiritual feminists who cried, ‘No Father in heaven,’ but also Thai, Burmese, Japanese, Brazilian, and Korean women who turned equally to female and male spirits for answers to problems, often seeing them as extensions to their own human families.

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