Editing Sociology of religion (section)

==Classical sociology==
Classical, seminal sociological theorists of the late 19th and early 20th century such 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 nature and effects of religion. Of these, Durkheim and Weber are often more difficult to understand, especially 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 work of all three.

===Karl Marx===
{{Main|Marxism and religion}}
[[File:Karl Marx 001.jpg|thumb|Karl Marx]]
According to Kevin J. Christiano, "Marx was the product of the Enlightenment, embracing its call to replace faith by reason and religion by science." But he "did not believe in science for science's sake … he believed that he was also advancing a theory that would … be a useful tool … [in] effecting a revolutionary upheaval of the capitalist system in favor of [[socialism]]."<ref>Christiano 2008, p. 124</ref>

As such, the crux of his arguments was that humans are best guided by reason. Religion, Marx held, was a significant hindrance to [[reason]], inherently masking the [[truth]] and misguiding followers.<ref>{{cite book|last=Settimba|first=Henry|title=Testing times : globalisation and investing theology in East Africa|year=2009|publisher=Author House|location=Milton Keynes|isbn=978-1-4389-4798-3|pages=230}}</ref> [[Marx's theory of alienation|Marx viewed alienation]] as the heart of [[social inequality]]. The antithesis to this [[Social alienation|alienation]] is [[Freedom (philosophy)|freedom]]. Thus, to propagate freedom means to present individuals with the truth and give them a choice to accept or deny it. In this, "Marx never suggested that religion ought to be prohibited."<ref>Christiano 2008, p. 126</ref>

Central to Marx's theories was the oppressive economic situation in which he dwelt. With the rise of [[Industrial Revolution|European industrialism]], Marx and his colleague [[Friedrich Engels]] witnessed and responded to the growth of what he called "[[surplus value]]". Marx's view of capitalism saw rich capitalists getting richer and their workers getting poorer (the gap, the exploitation, was the "surplus value"). Not only were workers getting exploited, but in the process they were being further detached from the products they helped create. By simply selling their work for [[wage]]s, "workers simultaneously lose connection with the object of labor and become objects themselves. Workers are devalued to the level of a commodity{{spaced ndash}}a thing …"<ref>Christiano 2008, p. 125</ref> From this [[objectification]] comes alienation. The common worker is led to believe that he or she is a replaceable tool, and is alienated to the point 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 who gather up riches and power in this life will almost certainly not be rewarded in the next ("it is harder for a rich man to enter the [[Kingdom of God|Kingdom of Heaven]] than it is for 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 – "[[Opium of the people|religion is the opium of the people]]", as it soothes them and dulls their senses to the pain of oppression. Some scholars have recently noted that this is a contradictory (or dialectical) metaphor, referring to religion as both an expression of suffering and a protest against suffering.<ref>McKinnon, AM. (2005). 'Reading ‘Opium of the People’: Expression, Protest and the Dialectics of Religion'. Critical Sociology, vol 31, no. 1-2, pp. 15–38. {{cite web |url=http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3074/1/marx_religion_and_opium_final_author_version.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2014-10-26 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140818030414/http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3074/1/marx_religion_and_opium_final_author_version.pdf |archive-date=2014-08-18 }}</ref>
[[File:Émile Durkheim.jpg|thumb]]

===Émile Durkheim===
[[Émile Durkheim]] placed himself in the [[positivism|positivist]] tradition, meaning that he thought of his study of society as dispassionate and scientific. He was deeply interested in the problem of what held complex modern 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 [[secularism|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 [[totem]]s 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, was not "imaginary", although he did deprive it of what many believers find essential.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bellah |first=Robert Nelly |date=1973 |title=Emile Durkheim: on morality and society |url=https://archive.org/details/onmoralitysociet00durk|url-access=limited |location=Chicago |publisher=University of Chicago Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/onmoralitysociet00durk/page/n246 191] |isbn= 9780226173368 |author-link=Robert Neelly Bellah }}</ref> 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 give that perception a [[supernatural]] face. We then express ourselves religiously in groups, which for Durkheim makes 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 [[clan]]s. The more complex a particular 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]] makes the individual seem more 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."<ref name="Swain">[https://archive.org/details/elementaryformso00durk ''The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)'']: Translated by Joseph Ward Swain, p. 47</ref> 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–profane dichotomy|sacred and the profane]], in effect this can be paralleled with the distinction between [[God]] and humans.

This definition also does not stipulate what exactly may be considered [[Sacred (comparative religion)|sacred]]. Thus later sociologists of religion (notably [[Robert Neelly Bellah]]) have extended Durkheimian insights to talk about 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 direction of the religion of professional sports, the military, or of rock music.

===Max Weber===
Max Weber published four major texts on religion in a context of [[economic sociology]] and his rationalization thesis: ''[[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism]]'' (1905), ''[[The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism]]'' (1915), ''[[The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism]]'' (1915), and ''[[Ancient Judaism (book)|Ancient Judaism]]'' (1920).[[File:Max Weber, 1918.jpg|thumb|Max Weber]]In his sociology, Weber uses the German term "[[Verstehen]]" to describe his method of interpretation of the intention and context of human action. Weber is not a [[positivism|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 hard positivist claims, but instead in linkages and sequences, in historical narratives and particular cases.<ref>Bjørn Thomassen, Rosario Forlenza, Catholic Modernity and the Italian Constitution, History Workshop Journal, Volume 81, Issue 1, Spring 2016, Pages 231–251</ref>

Weber argues for making sense of religious action on its own terms. A religious group or individual is influenced by all kinds of things, he says, but if they claim to be acting in the name of religion, we should attempt to understand their [[Perspective (cognitive)|perspective]] on religious grounds first. Weber gives religion credit for shaping a person's image 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 of a [[divinity|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 good fortune and suffering in the world. Religion offers people soteriological answers, or answers that provide opportunities for [[salvation]] – relief from suffering, and reassuring meaning. The pursuit of salvation, like the pursuit of wealth, becomes a part 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 most famous and controversial work, ''[[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism]]''.

In ''The Protestant Ethic'', Weber argues that capitalism arose in Europe in part because of how the [[belief]] in [[predestination]] was interpreted by everyday English [[Puritan]]s. 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 well financially in their businesses, this would be one unofficial sign they 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 live – and this is the "spirit of capitalism".<ref>Andrew McKinnon (2010) "Elective Affinities of the Protestant Ethic: Weber and the Chemistry of Capitalism" Sociological Theory vol 28 no. 1. pages 108–126. {{cite web |url=http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3035/1/McKinnon_Elective_Affinities_final_non_format.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2014-10-26 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140818023547/http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3035/1/McKinnon_Elective_Affinities_final_non_format.pdf |archive-date=2014-08-18 }}</ref> Over time, the habits associated with the spirit of capitalism lost their religious significance, and the rational pursuit of [[Profit (economics)|profit]] became an aim in its own right.

''The Protestant Ethic'' thesis has been much critiqued, refined, and disputed, but is still a lively source 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 type]]s of religious attitudes:<ref>Pawel Zaleski "Ideal Types in Max Weber's Sociology of Religion: Some Theoretical Inspirations for a Study of the Religious Field", ''Polish Sociological Review'' No. 3(171)/2010</ref>
# world-flying mysticism
# world-rejecting asceticism
# inner-worldly asceticism.

He also separated [[magic (paranormal)|magic]] as pre-religious activity.