9 Conclusion

If religion is the search for meaningful understandings of reality it has

taken an enormous diversity of forms. This should not, perhaps,
surprise us too much since the range of possibilities is limited, as
Stark and Bainbridge (1987) point out, only by the human imagina-
tion. The very diversity itself testifies to the problematic nature of this
search. A not unreasonable conclusion to draw from this might well be
that even after millennia of human endeavour in this respect, no
satisfactory answers have yet been or are likely to be found. An equally
reasonable conclusion, on the other hand, might be that many societies
or social groups have found answers that work very well for them and
with which they are satisfied. Religious beliefs, once established, can be
remarkably resilient and resistant to change and modification; once
established, a meaningful account of reality is not easily questioned or
relinquished. To subject it to question is to pose too serious a threat to
the sense that things hang together in a meaningful order. Religious
answers, however, do change, develop and are sometimes supplanted
by others. Such fluidity as religion manifests is undeniably closely
bound up with social change. Religious beliefs are also highly export-
able across social and cultural boundaries, although they generally
undergo considerable change and reinterpretation in the process or
become combined with indigenous beliefs in new syntheses or syncret-
istic fusions.
All this makes the task of identifying the nature of the links between
religion and social patterns extremely difficult. If it is difficult to speak
of a sociology of religion per se, it is equally difficult to speak of a
sociology of Buddhism or of Islam, and so on, since these traditions
are themselves so varied and diverse across the societies and historical
time periods in which they can be found. The relationship between
religion and society is a complex one. The fit is not necessarily close,
yet is always apparent. Religion, also, is not only shaped by social
forces and factors but is itself one of these forces and factors.
Even within a particular version of a particular tradition, espoused
by a particular community at a particular period in time, it is not easy
to bridge the gulf between the local particularities and the more general
aspects of those 'great' traditions which span multiple communities
and groups - the gulf, that is, between the micro and macro levels.
Time and again we have met with the difficulty that scholars have

244
M. B. Hamilton, Sociology and the World’s Religions
© Malcolm B. Hamilton 1998
 Conclusion 245

encountered in dealing with the Buddhism or Islam or whatever of the

village community they have studied when it is not quite like the
Buddhism or Islam that one finds described in scripture or in text-
books on the subject. Despite the fact that we think we know what
Buddhism or Islam is, to say that this or that community is Buddhist or
Islamic sometimes tells us little about what its members actually
believe or do. While it is no wonder, then, that anthropologists con-
centrate on small communities and sociologists have tended to be
attracted by the small sect, anthropology cannot neglect the wider
culture and sociology must endeavour to be more comparative.
Another major problem is the diversity of theoretical approaches
that have been adopted which makes it very difficult to assess the
contribution that sociology has made to the comparative study of
religion. Until many more studies are undertaken in each of the
major religious traditions utilising the range of theoretical perspectives
on offer it is impossible to say which of them is the more fruitful in
yielding better understanding. One could not get very far in this
objective with, for example, one or two neo-Freudian accounts of
Buddhism and Hinduism, a functionalist study of Confucianism and
a Marxist approach to the Reformation.
Yet the body of work that has been carried out does begin to
illuminate the social dimensions of these and other traditions as this
book, hopefully, demonstrates. This body of work is best regarded as
a small beginning in what is a very large endeavour. It would be rash,
as a consequence, to attempt to draw too many conclusions at this
stage of our knowledge, but the broad survey carried out here may,
however, allow us to make, if tentatively, a number of observations
relating to the larger comparative picture of religious diversity and
development.
The religions of tribal and small-scale societies were contrasted in
Chapter 2 with those which transcend local communities, and ethnic,
cultural and linguistic divisions. The former lack the transcendental
emphasis of the latter and their concern with wider questions of mean-
ing and with salvation. The religions which emphasise these aspects,
with some of which a large part of this book has been concerned,
emerged at a time which has been termed the 'axial age' (Jaspers,
1949), namely the period of the first millennium BC. Certainly,
between approximately 800 BC and the beginning of the Christian
era religious, philosophical and ethical ideas emerged of a character
quite unlike those which were prevalent in tribal societies or the earlier
civilisations. The emergence of prophetic, monotheistic and later
246 Sociology and the World's Religions

rabbinical Judaism, the rise ofUpanishadic Hinduism and its inheritor

Buddhism and the development of Confucianism and Taoism are
features of this age. Christianity and Islam were later offsprings.
The emergence of these systems of thought and ideas in remotely
separated areas of the globe in this relatively circumscribed period of
time suggests that there may have been common factors at work. While
the level of technological and economic development, degree of spe-
cialisation of labour and social differentiation and extent of political
development and centralisation were not sufficient conditions for the
rise of transcendental religious conceptions, these were clearly among
the relevant background factors. In some of the centres of civilisation,
for example Egypt, no such religious developments occurred, yet the
spread of common cultural patterns and political rule over large geo-
graphical areas and populations with the rise of the larger states and
empires played an important role in stimulating the emergence of the
transcendental religions (Schwartz, 1975). Also important for the
emergence of these systems of belief was the prior development of
extensive communication systems, trading networks and wider polit-
ical and military structures. Another crucial factor was the expansion
of literacy. Complex messages such as those we are concerned with
cannot be transmitted across extensive geographical and social space
unless their form can be preserved in written texts not subject to the
limitations and potential degradation of meaning that accompany oral
communication (Mann, 1986).
Such preconditions, however, are only necessary and not sufficient
to account for the rise of the transcendental religions. It has been
suggested that the explanation of their emergence in only some places
is in terms of particular crises that hit these regions to which the new
religious ideas were a reaction and response but there is little by way of
analysis of what sort of crises these may have been.
This survey of the sociological work on the world religions suggests
to some extent what sort of conditions gave rise to the transcendental
religions. We have seen that Upanishadic Hinduism and Buddhism
arose at a time when the more egalitarian tribal republics were giving
way to the centralised, bureaucratic and stratified larger states. Con-
fucianism and Taoism were the response during the period of the
warring states in China to the demise of the smaller state in a process
of conquest and emergence of an imperial system. Judaism emerged
from the oscillations in Palestine between domination on the part of
one or other mighty bureaucratic neighbour on the one hand and
autonomy on the other, circumstances that perennially led the people
 Conclusion 247

of the area, as Weber pointed out, to be astonished at the course of

events. Christianity was in part the response to the undermining of
community and local traditions and incorporation into the Roman
Empire. Islam emerged in a situation of competing influence of large
bureaucratic and centralised states over a tribal area undergoing in
places a profound social and economic transformation which was
undermining traditional patterns of relationship and obligation
In all these cases the religious messages developed by sages or
prophets were intended to form the basis for a new social order.
Both Christianity and Islam sought to replace increasingly inappropri-
ate tribal, kinship and local loyalties with a new kind of community
based in faith. In China the Confucians sought to found social order
on new principles rather than those of the old feudal and militaristic
elites. Buddhism sought to fill the vacuum of values left by the demise
of the tribal republics and to combat a growing individualism. Over a
long period of time in Palestine a degree of ethical rationalisation of
life conduct was achieved in the face of the more usual peasant and
proletarian magical and ritual style of religious life. In the process these
religions often fused a new individualism with older virtues which were
universalised and channelled in less particularistic directions. If indi-
vidualism had previously been growing in an unregulated manner the
new systems of belief sought to transform it into an ethically based,
soteriological and eschatological individual responsibility.
A major consequence of the emergence of transcendental concep-
tions of the world was the perception of a tension between the tran-
scendental and the mundane order and a concomitant problem of how
the chasm between them could be bridged. Attempts to resolve these
problems had a whole series of consequences for the way these societies
developed. One such consequence was that already referred to, namely
the emergence of identities based upon religion and culture rather than
ethnicity or locality. Another was the emergence of a differentiation
between the centre, the guardian of the new systems of belief, and the
periphery where older local traditions continued to flourish (Eisen-
stadt, 1982).
Against the rise of more universalistic and transcendental belief
systems we see in most cases a survival oflocal, 'little' or folk traditions
alongside the 'great' traditions which spanned large areas giving rise to
the interplay between them which is such a central feature of many of
the studies reviewed here. We see, also, the emergence of great mis-
sionary traditions which have sought to carry, often successfully, more
universalistic ideas and principles beyond the confines of the political
248 Sociology and the World's Religions

units in which they originally emerged. These systems of belief and

practice have also been spread by political, military and economic
expansion over astonishingly wide areas, although, as previously
noted, not without major alteration and adaptation in the process.
Despite the commonalities of circumstance which gave rise to systems
of belief sharing certain very broad features, the result was a set of
divergences which played their part in establishing a number of distinct
civilisations. The systems of ideas associated with these civilisations
have often been in direct competition with one another while in other
instances we observe a remarkable capacity for them to coexist along-
side one another. Despite considerable local syncretism and coexist-
ence, however, the world became broadly divided into the Hindu,
Buddhist, Christian and Islamic spheres and to a considerable extent
remains so even today. While we are witnessing an ever-increasing and
accelerating process of globalisation this has not so far threatened this
division. As theorists of globalisation who focus on religion have
pointed out (for example, Robertson, 1985; Robertson and Chirico,
1985; Beyer, 1994) there has been a localising and particularising
counter-reaction which centres on religious identity as much as upon
any other and in many ways more so. The Christian world has wit-
nessed a long-term process of marginalisation of religion which for
some constitutes a deeply-rooted secularisation of society though the
meanings given to this term and the extent and nature of this margin-
alisation are hotly debated. Whatever position one takes on this,
however, and while patterns vary considerably from one place to
another, it is clear that religion in much of the Christian world is not
firmly at the centre of the concerns of the majority of the population
nor prominent in public life and the conduct of affairs. Elsewhere
religion is and seems set to remain for the foreseeable future, on the
whole, an important aspect of social and political life and in the
definition of personal, ethnic, national or cultural identity.