Editing Sociology of religion (section)

===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.