Classical sociology
Classical, seminal sociological theorists of the late 19th and early 20th century such(a) as Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx were greatly interested in religion and its effects on society. Like those of Plato and Aristotle from ancient Greece, and Enlightenment philosophers from the 17th through 19th centuries, the ideas posited by these sociologists continue to be examined today.
Durkheim, Marx, and Weber had very complex and developed theories about the style and effects of religion. Of these, Durkheim and Weber are often more difficult to understand, particularly in light of the lack of context and examples in their primary texts. Religion was considered to be an extremely important social variable in the realise of all three.
According to Kevin J. Christiano et al., "Marx was the product of the Enlightenment, embracing its call to replace faith by reason and religion by science." But he "did non believe in science for science's sake … he believed that he was also advancing a view that would … be a useful tool … [in] effecting a revolutionary upheaval of the capitalist system in favor of Marx viewed alienation as the heart of social inequality. The antithesis to this alienation is freedom. Thus, to propagate freedom means to portrayed individuals with the truth and afford them a option to accept or deny it. In this, "Marx never suggested that religion ought to be prohibited."
Central to Marx's theories was the oppressive economic situation in which he dwelt. With the rise of objectification comes alienation. The common worker is led to believe that he or she is a replaceable tool, and is alienated to the constituent of extreme discontent. Here, in Marx's eyes, religion enters. Capitalism utilizes our tendency towards religion as a tool or ideological state apparatus to justify this alienation. Christianity teaches that those whoup riches and energy in this life will most certainly non be rewarded in the next "it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than this is the a camel to pass through the eye of a needle …" while those who suffer oppression and poverty in this life while cultivating their spiritual wealth will be rewarded in the Kingdom of God. Hence Marx's famous line – "religion is the opium of the people", as it soothes them and dulls their senses to the pain of oppression. Some scholars have recently transmitted that this is a contradictory or dialectical metaphor, referring to religion as both an expression of suffering and a protest against suffering.
Émile Durkheim placed himself in the positivist tradition, meaning that he thought of his discussing of society as dispassionate and scientific. He was deeply interested in the problem of what held complex advanced societies together. Religion, he argued, was an expression of social cohesion.
In the field work that led to his famous Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim, a secular Frenchman, looked at anthropological data of Indigenous Australians. His underlying interest was to understand the basic forms of religious life for all societies. In Elementary Forms, Durkheim argues that the totems the Aborigines venerate are actually expressions of their own conceptions of society itself. This is true not only for the Aborigines, he argues, but for all societies.
Religion, for Durkheim, is not "imaginary", although he does deprive it of what many believers find essential. Religion is very real; it is an expression of society itself, and indeed, there is no society that does not have religion. We perceive as individuals a force greater than ourselves, which is our social life, and afford that perception a supernatural face. We then express ourselves religiously in groups, which for Durkheim authorises the symbolic power greater. Religion is an expression of our collective consciousness, which is the fusion of all of our individual consciousnesses, which then creates a reality of its own.
It follows, then, that less complex societies, such as the Australian Aborigines, have less complex religious systems, involving totems associated with particular clans. The more complex a specific society, the more complex the religious system is. As societies come in contact with other societies, there is a tendency for religious systems to emphasize universalism to a greater and greater extent. However, as the division of labour enable the individualmore important a subject that Durkheim treats extensively in his famous The Division of Labour in Society, religious systems increasingly focus on individual salvation and conscience.
Durkheim's definition of religion, from Elementary Forms, is as follows: "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." This is a functional definition of religion, meaning that it explains what religion does in social life: essentially, it unites societies. Durkheim defined religion as a clear distinction between the sacred and the profane, in case this can be paralleled with the distinction between God and humans.
This definition also does not stipulate what exactly may be considered sacred. Thus later sociologists of religion notably Robert Neelly Bellah have extended Durkheimian insights to talk approximately notions of civil religion, or the religion of a state. American civil religion, for example, might be said to have its own set of sacred "things": the flag of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. Other sociologists have taken Durkheim's concept of what religion is in the a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of the religion of fine sports, the military, or of rock music.
Max Weber published four major texts on religion in a context of 1915, 1915, and Ancient Judaism 1920.
In his sociology, Weber uses the German term "Verstehen" to describe his method of interpretation of the purpose and context of human action. Weber is not a positivist; he does not believe we can find out "facts" in sociology that can be causally linked. Although he believes some generalized statements about social life can be made, he is not interested in tough positivist claims, but instead in linkages and sequences, in historical narratives and particular cases.
Weber argues for creating sense of religious action on its own terms. A religious multiple or individual is influenced by all kinds of things, he says, but whether they claim to be acting in the name of religion, we should effort to understand their perspective on religious grounds first. Weber gives religion module of reference for shaping a person's concepts of the world, and this image of the world can affect their view of their interests, and ultimately how they decide to take action.
For Weber, religion is best understood as it responds to the human need for theodicy and soteriology. Human beings are troubled, he says, with the question of theodicy – the question of how the extraordinary power to direct or established to direct or determining of a divine god may be reconciled with the imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over. People need to know, for example, why there is undeserved advantage fortune and suffering in the world. Religion offers people soteriological answers, or answers that give opportunities for salvation – relief from suffering, and reassuring meaning. The pursuit of salvation, like the pursuit of wealth, becomes a element of human motivation.
Because religion helps to define motivation, Weber believed that religion and specifically Calvinism actually helped to give rise to modern capitalism, as he asserted in his near famous and controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
In The Protestant Ethic, Weber argues that capitalism arose in Europe in factor because of how the belief in predestination was interpreted by everyday English Puritans. Puritan theology was based on the Calvinist notion that not everyone would be saved; there was only a specific number of the elect who would avoid damnation, and this was based sheerly on God's predetermined will and not on any action you could perform in this life. Official doctrine held that one could not ever really know whether one was among the elect.
Practically, Weber noted, this was difficult psychologically: people were understandably anxious to know whether they would be eternally damned or not. Thus Puritan leaders began assuring members that if they began doing alive financially in their businesses, this would be one unofficialthey had God's approval and were among the saved – but only if they used the fruits of their labour well. This along with the rationalism implied by monotheism led to the development of rational bookkeeping and the calculated pursuit of financial success beyond what one needed simply to survive – and this is the "spirit of capitalism". Over time, the habits associated with the spirit of capitalism lost their religious significance, and the rational pursuit of profit became an goal in its own right.
The Protestant Ethic thesis has been much critiqued, refined, and disputed, but is still a lively address of theoretical debate in sociology of religion. Weber also did considerable work on world religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.
In his magnum opus Economy and Society Weber distinguished three ideal types of religious attitudes:
He also separated magic as pre-religious activity.