ABSTRACT
This afterword provides some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book introduces how religious traditions can be used to create, maintain, and contest social order. It also introduces readers to the most useful concepts for thinking critically about religions: the hermeneutics of suspicion and social functionalism, classification and essentialism, group boundaries, social hierarchy, and social positions, as well as assigned behaviors, social roles, moral norms, and behavioral codes. The book also discusses socialization and social reproduction, naturalization and mystification, internalized domination, habitus, normalization, privilege, and discrimination, and legitimation and manufacturing consent. Cultural toolbox and cultural tools, authority and projection, return-to-origins narratives and false universalism, and authenticity claims are also examined. The book shows that if people pay more attention to all the things that are they take for granted, it will be easier to identify and reconsider disproportionate social structures.
