In the modern Christian religion, Durkeim argues that the moral commandments such as The Golden Rule and The Ten Commandments are primarily social rules. These rules regulate human?s behavior toward eachother and serve to maintain a sense of social unity. People do not follow these rules out of their fear for heaven or hell but for their desire to be accepted by society. If they participate in the religious rituals they will feel a sense of belonging, whereas those who break the rules and avoid the rituals suffer from social isolation. To Durkheim, God is merely a symbol of society.
Max Weber’s sociology is the foundation of scientific sociology of religion in a sense of typological and objective understanding. Rejecting Karl Marx’s evolutionary law of class society, or Emile Durkheim’s sustained law of moral society, Weber established the understanding sociology of the subjective meaning of religious action or inaction. He argued that the transformation of religion allowed for social changes where people could now work together to gain economic wealth. In a primitive society there were many gods, those kinsmen who worshipped the same household god as you could be trusted but those strangers who worshipped a different god were ?aliens? and could not be trusted.
The rise of the great world religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, separated the idea of the natural world from the idea of the spiritual world. Instead of gods and spirits, people become widely concerned with the idea of heaven and hell. Weber argues that the idea of a universal God allowed for laws based on consistent general principles. Religion itself can also develop in new directions. (P.133) In primitive religions one prays to the gods to make his crops grow or kill off enemies. In the event of a natural disaster the kinsmen would believe that the gods were angry with them and continue to hold ceremonial sacrifices until the weather was better. It was this fear of the gods that kept the primitive kinsmen from trusting anyone else. In this new spiritual realm, the righteous individual who follows all the rituals and laws of his religion can still hope for salvation even if his has bad fortune. ?The ideas of good and evil can develop separately from the ideas of worldly success and failure.?(P.134)
In Weber?s writing The Protestant Ethic he discusses the role that religion played in the rise of capitalism. This new religious breakthrough ?opened many of the doors to industrialization: laying the basis for a moral community of trust underlying peaceful commerce; rationalizing the legal system; motivating people to remake political, social, and economic institutions in keeping with an imperative to transform the world more closely to the ideal.?(P.134) Religion was now responsible for uniting and enlarging a community who could live together in peace with the same moral and ethical code of conduct.
Weber believed that the Protestant ethic broke the hold of tradition while it encouraged men to apply themselves rationally to their work. Calvinism, he found, had developed a set of beliefs around the concept of predestination. Followers of Calvin believed that one could not do good works or perform acts of faith to assure your place in heaven. You were either among the “elect” (in which case you were in) or you were not. However, wealth was taken as a sign by you and your neighbors that you were one of the Gods elect, thereby providing encouragement for people to acquire wealth. The Protestant ethic therefore provided religious sanctions that fostered a spirit of rigorous discipline, encouraging men to apply themselves rationally to acquire wealth.
This naturalistic approach to religion represented a fundamental paradigm shift in how religion was to be viewed. Instead of requiring clergy in order to understand religion, the requirement became facts and information and research. Whether you agree with the evaluation of the social function of religion as Marx did, that religion was the ?opium of the people?, as Durkheim did that religion was what made moral society hold together, or with Weber?s The Protestant ethic, it is obvious that religion played a key role in the development of society.
Bibliography
1- Collins, Makowisky; The Discovery of Society
2- www.brittanica.com
How do we account for religion – its origin, its development, and even its persistence in modern society? This is a question which has occupied many people in a variety of fields for quite a long time. At one point, the answers were framed in purely theological and religious terms, assuming the truth of Christian revelations and proceeding from there. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a more ?naturalistic? approach developed. Instead of needing to believe in the truth of the religion, what was required was just the opposite: intellectual detachment and a suspension of belief. Three people who ended up doing just that were Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber.