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Understanding Religion in History
When sociologists first set out to understand how society works, they immediately appreciated that their theories had to account for religion. Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber all had ideas about the role of religion in society. In this section, I explain each of their theories in turn. (For more on Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, see Chapter 3.)
Marx: Opiate of the people
Many people see religion as being at the core of their lives, at the heart of what makes them happy. Most sociologists believe that religion is mostly, if not always, a constructive force in society. There are, however, some sociologists who believe that religion has an impact on society that is by and large negative, even destructive. The most famous of those sociologists is Karl Marx.
Marx believed that understanding society was fundamentally about understanding power, and that power was fundamentally tied to what he called “the means of production.” If I own the field that you need to grow food, or the machinery you need to build a home, or the company you need to work at to earn money, I have power over you. It doesn’t particularly matter what you believe about the situation; what matters is the material reality of the situation, which is that you will starve unless you do as I want.
Marx was personally a skeptic, and his social theory reflected his belief that any promise of divine reward for hard work and a “good life” was empty; that people without power in the here and now should not count on justice being done in the hereafter.
Many theologians and people of faith believe that earthly suffering happens for a reason, whether or not that reason can be understood by those who are suffering; Marx believed that whether or not that was the case, the affect of religion in the societies he could observe was largely to distract people from fighting for fair treatment.
If a person is barely getting by, working hard all day and being given only a fraction of the profit their work is earning for their employer, that is wrong, thought Marx — and if a person’s religious belief that they would reap rewards in heaven deterred that person from fighting for fair treatment on earth, that would be bad. Religion, thought Marx, tends to get in the way of human happiness. It lulls people to sleep and keeps them from recognizing the injustice of their surroundings; that’s why he called it “the opiate of the people.”
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Most sociologists today find Marx’s views extreme, and you might too — but his ideas are important to think about. Marx was skeptical of not only religion, but of anything that kept people from questioning the status quo. That could include all or any of these phenomena:
Advertisements for expensive products that you “need to have”
Politicians who say that people who have different policy ideas than they do are “unpatriotic”
Traditions that keep members of a certain sex or race in a subservient position because “it’s always been that way”
Whether or not they agree with Marx, sociologists do agree that it’s hard to understand the social world if you approach it with a set of preconceptions about how things are “supposed” to be. At the heart of Marx’s criticism of religion is a rejection of anything that keeps people from working towards a society that is fair for everyone.
Some communist governments based on Marx’s ideas have tried to eradicate religion altogether, but they haven’t been entirely successful. A man who would not be surprised at that is Emile Durkheim, who believed that religion is an essential feature of a healthy society.
Emile Durkheim: A metaphor for society
Emile Durkheim didn’t agree with Marx that religion was a destructive force in society. Why, asked Durkheim, would something destructive be at the center of virtually every society ever known? It just didn’t make sense. Durkheim believed that religion must serve a function in society, must do something to help people work together happily and productively.
Marx thought that religion was an “opiate,” something that put people to sleep and kept them from standing up for themselves. Durkheim agreed that religion helped encourage people to trust others, but unlike Marx, Durkheim believed that this was by and large a good thing. If every man and woman just looked out for themselves, believed Durkheim, society would fall apart. Sharing religious beliefs, values, and practices helps people recognize what they have in common, and helps encourage them to set aside their differences and make personal sacrifices for the good of society. Religion, said Durkheim, is one of the essential institutions in any society.
Durkheim’s ideas about religion are especially interesting with respect to social change. Societies change over time, Durkheim observed — from
Africa to Asia to America to Europe, societies tend to follow a general path
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of evolution from relatively simple tribal societies to complex industrial societies, even if they don’t follow that path at the same pace. Further, Durkheim noticed, the religious beliefs and practices of those societies tended to change as well — which only makes sense. If a society is changing, and religion is at the heart of that society, then religion needs to change too!
Durkheim believed that religion helped societies maintain their solidarity . . .
but what kind of solidarity a society needs, thought Durkheim, changes over the course of its history. In this way, religion is a metaphor for society itself.
Mechanical solidarity
Early on in any society’s history, people’s lives are similar and it’s useful for them to follow very specific rules: rules about where to go and when, rules about what responsibilities are associated with various social statuses, rules about specific rituals and practices. Durkheim called this mechanical solidarity because people need to “mechanically” follow very specific rules, or the society could be in danger. The society’s needs are too specific, and too pressing, for individuals to decide for themselves what practices they’re going to follow.
Sure enough, noticed Durkheim, religious beliefs in simple societies tend to be very specific and ritualistic. Members of these societies tend to believe in divinities who make specific demands on people and who have humanlike personalities. There may be a rain god who will be angered unless a specific ritual is followed, or a war god who has clear ideas about how territorial incursions ought to be dealt with. The Judeo-Christian God of the Old
Testament fairly micromanages His people, showing up in a column of smoke or a burning bush to have conversations with mortals and hand down precise edicts. For Durkheim, this was the essence of mechanical solidarity.
Organic solidarity
As societies grow and become more complex, noticed Durkheim, it’s less workable for everyone in a society to follow the same specific rules and practices. People’s lives become much more diverse, and if everyone followed the same very precise set of rules and rituals, the social system would grind to a halt. What’s more useful is for people to follow a general set of common principles that can be applied to diverse situations. Durkheim called this organic solidarity because people in complex societies need to organically adapt their behavior to the particular situations they’re in.
As societies move toward organic solidarity, Durkheim pointed out, their religious beliefs tend to become more diffuse and general. Members of these societies are less likely to believe in gods with human-like personalities making concrete demands on mortals; instead, members of big, complex societies are likely to believe in gods who are at a greater remove from humanity. People have general ideas about what kind of behavior these divinities want, but they are less likely to go through their days attending to specific rituals. In general,
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Christians today decreasingly identify with the personal God of the Old Testament; rather, they identify with the God of the New Testament, who loves His children and wants them to care for one another but is unlikely to show up on Earth to tell them exactly what to do in any given situation. This, for Durkheim, is what organic solidarity is all about.
The bottom line
Durkheim’s theory is challenging, and may seem hard to understand, but here’s the bottom line about what Durkheim believed:
Religion is an essential feature of society. It encourages cooperation and mutual respect.
Because of this, as society changes, religion needs to change also — and it does.
To understand how this works, consider the separation of church and state, which was a core belief of the founders of the United States. No church, they believed, had any business directly influencing a country’s laws. To this day, citizens of the United States are free to practice any religion without interference from the government; government leaders are not allowed to make laws that favor one religion over another. This is also the case in most other countries around the world . . . but it hasn’t always been that way.
For most of human history, church leaders have had official influence on laws and social structure. In many cases, religious leaders essentially were the leaders of governments. People whose religious beliefs were contrary to those of the leaders could be punished, even killed, for their beliefs. Horrible though this was, Durkheim would say that in societies bound by mechanical solidarity it made sense. If you believe that there’s a divinity who has very specific ideas about what you should do and when, that divinity might well have ideas that conflict with others’. In this kind of society, it’s hard for people of different faiths to live and work together.
In societies bound by organic solidarity, on the other hand, people tend to believe in divinities who have relatively general notions of acceptable behavior: Treat others as you would want to be treated. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Be honest. People today don’t tend to believe in divinities who prescribe specific styles of dress or specific hard-and-fast social roles for
people of different sexes, races, or families of birth. People with this kind of religious belief have a much easier time living and working together, and it makes sense for governments to allow them to do so without following the exact same religious traditions.
Where things get hairy in these situations is when people need to follow specific religious practices that conflict with civic laws. That’s a relatively rare situation, but it does happen — you can probably think of some examples — and it can cause a flurry of debate, even violent debate. Social solidarity isn’t always easy!
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Max Weber, the last of the “big three” early sociologists, agreed with Durkheim that religion changes along with society — but he didn’t think there was necessarily anything “mechanical” or “organic” about it.
Weber: A switchman on the tracks
Max Weber agreed with Durkheim that religion was a fundamentally important part of society, but Weber also noticed that religion didn’t always lead to peace, love, and understanding. There’s no question, agreed Weber, that religious beliefs and values fundamentally affect the way that people lead their lives — but whereas Durkheim believed that changes in the social structure would more or less inevitably lead to changes in religious beliefs, Weber believed that it often worked the other way around: that religious beliefs and values led to widespread social change.
In Chapter 3, I mention Weber’s view of religion as a “switchman on the tracks.” Specifically, Weber wrote about the importance of the Protestant values of hard work and thrift in the development of modern capitalist society. If theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin hadn’t promoted these values, believed Weber, modern capitalism would probably never have succeeded. It’s not that Luther and Calvin exactly wanted to bring about a capitalist society, but the values they preached nonetheless led to that outcome, said Weber. Both Marx and Durkheim, on the other hand, believed that the arrival of capitalism was basically inevitable and would have happened with or without “the Protestant Ethic.”
Weber used the “switchman on the tracks” metaphor to acknowledge that not all outcomes are possible in society — there are distinct sets of “tracks” that a society might follow, depending on how things turn out. Which set they choose, though, may be determined by religious or cultural values. (See Chapter 5 for more on culture.)
Many sociologists today lean towards Weber’s view of religion rather than Marx’s or Durkheim’s because Weber’s view makes room for both cohesion and conflict:
Like Durkheim, Weber appreciated that religious values, beliefs, and traditions can serve as a powerful form of social glue holding people together and helping them cooperate to achieve shared goals.
Like Marx, though, Weber also understood that religious values don’t always line up with social realities — and that they can lead to unnecessary conflict.
Marx believed that religion leads to conflict and exploitation while Durkheim believed that religion leads to cooperation and unity. Weber understood that both of those perspectives might be correct.