Critically discuss Durkheim’s perspective on religion.

 Religion: A Functionalist Perspective: Religion, in the view of functionalist, contributes a lot in society and help in maintaining social solidarity which in turn help in maintaining harmony and integration between the different parts of the society.

Private Limited Religion helps in the integration of people and brings about a feeling of belonging in them.

Because rituals are performed in a collective group, religion brings about a feeling of having something in common between different groups in the society.

The belief in people is also common in nature. Also, the values and ideals are common in nature. According to a functionalist, religion is a social phenomenon or institution that helps in performing these functions.

DURKHEIM’S POSITIVE DEFINITION OF RELIGION

Durkheim tried to define religion by dividing it into two directions.

Firstly, appositive direction in which he made number of observations and secondly investigative direction in which he reduced the religion into elementary parts and tried to find out what is common in all religions.

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, which means that it explains what religion does in social life: Essentially it unites societies.

Durkheim defined religion as a clear distinction between a sacred and profane in effect this can be paralleled with the distinction between God and humans.

Nearer to the end of the book, Durkheim revises and secularizes his definition as “first and foremost, a system of ideas by which men imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have with it”.

CRITICAL REMARKS ON DURKHEIM’S SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Durkheim’s sociology of religion is associated with certain critical remarks. Some of these are:

• Ignoring the role of the individual religious leaders and the way the religion functions in social conflict and asymmetrical relations of power.

• Stressing more on social psychology. 

• Durkheim centralized his study on a single tribe in Australia and ignored the neighboring Australian tribes and made arbitrary speculation.

• According to some theorists, there is no evidence that the Australian totemism is the earliest totemism.

•Some scholars even suggest that the Australian data was introduced only to illustrate Durkheim’s theory.

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