 Durkheim evolved a functional explanation for the existence of religion in the world.

 He observed its existence as a social fact and not as a supernatural phenomenon.

 He gave the idea of religion in his work, Elementary Forms Of Religious Life 1912.

DEFINITION BY DURKHEIM

 Religion – A unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things, that is to say – things
set apart and forbidden, beliefs and practices, which you need them into a single moral
community, for all those who adhere to them.

EXPLANATION OF THE DEFINITION

 Beliefs – A unified system of ideas which explain the sacred, they constitute of myths, spiritual
ideas, ethical code, etc.
 Practices – Rites or rituals explaining individuals behaviour towards the sacred.
 Positive rites – Bring individual and sacred together and are easier to perform, like worship.
 Negative rites – Help in maintaining the distance between the two ( individual and sacred) and
keep them separated, for example, fasting and sacrifice.

SACRED AND PROFANE

 Society consists of two parts – the sacred and the profane.

The Sacred
• Things which are set apart and are forbidden.
• It includes all things which are connected to the supernatural or the divine.
• Relationship of distance and fear is maintained with the respect to these things.
Profane
• Profane are the things apart from the sacred.
• Includes day-to-day things which people use in their lives.

TOTEMISM

 In this, totems are worshipped.

 Totem is a representation of the clan itself.
 He drew his analysis from the study of religious practices among Arunta, the Australian
aboriginals.
  Primitive men, when they came together for some purpose like festivals and interacted on such
occasions, they felt the energy of social force.
 According to primitive logic, they explain this feeling in terms of presence of some supernatural
force.
 Durkheim calls this height and feeling of energy generated in collective gatherings as state of
exaltation or collective effervescence.
 These higher forces are deemed as divine or supernatural and attributed to certain totems by the
primitive tribes.
 They create a totem to represent and regain that feeling.
 The totems are the material representations of the non-material force that is at their base and that
non-material force is none other than the society itself.
 The feeling which was due to the feeling of being together, was instead, interpreted as The
Sacred.So, totem is a symbol of collectivity or the symbol of society itself.

RELIGION AND SOCIETY

 Durkheim asks ‘If it is at once the symbol of God and Society, is it not because God and Society
are one and same’?
 Religious experiences are real experiences of social forces, forces that unite us.
 Social obligations are represented in sacred terms and hence transform into religious duties. Eg:
Marriage becomes a sacrament.
 Religion is also a social fact.
 It performs the function of bringing people together.

CRITICISM

 The dichotomy of profane and sacred is not absolute and there can be ‘things’ also as per William
Edward Stanner.
 Durkheim did not explain why a particular totem is chosen.
 Criticized for being an armchair theory.
 Generalisation of primitive religion to modern sophisticated religion is a farfetched view.
 Scholars argue that it is not religion but secularism which is binding the societies together in
modern industrialised societies.
 Fails to explain the cause of solidarity in multicultural polytheistic societies like India.
 Focused only on functional aspects and ignored the conflict caused by religion.

Durkheim on Religion

“If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion."

"For we know today that a religion does not necessarily imply symbols and rites, properly speaking, or temples and
priests. This whole exterior apparatus is only the superficial part. Essentially, it is nothing other than a body of
collective beliefs and practices endowed with a certain authority."

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, the last major work published by Durkheim, five years before his death in
1917, is generally regarded as his best and most mature. Where Suicide focused on a large amount of statistics from
varying sources, The Elementary Forms used one case study in depth, the Australian aborigines. Durkheim chose this
group because he felt they represented the most basic, elementary forms of religion within a culture.
Durkheim set out to do two things, establish the fact that religion was not divinely or supernaturally inspired and was
in fact a product of society, and he sought to identify the common things that religion placed an emphasis upon, as
well as what effects those religious beliefs (the product of social life) had on the lives of all within a society.
Durkheim's finding that religion was social can best be described by this excerpt from The Elementary Forms:
"The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before him is that religion is something eminently social.
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities; the rites are a manner of
acting which take rise in the midst of assembled groups and which are destined to excite, maintain, or recreate
certain mental states in these groups. So if the categories are of religious origin, they ought to participate in this
nature common to all religious facts; they should be social affairs and the product of collective thought. At least -- for
in the actual condition of our knowledge of these matters, one should be careful to avoid all radical and exclusive
statements -- it is allowable to suppose that they are rich in social elements.” Recognizing the social origin of religion,
Durkheim argued that religion acted as a source of solidarity and identification for the individuals within a society,
especially as a part of mechanical solidarity systems, and to a lesser, but still important extent in the context of
organic solidarity. Religion provided a meaning for life, it provided authority figures, and most importantly for
Durkheim, it reinforced the morals and social norms held collectively by all within a society. Far from dismissing
religion as mere fantasy, despite its natural origin, Durkheim saw it as a critical part of the social system. Religion
provides social control, cohesion, and purpose for people, as well as another means of communication and gathering
for individuals to interact and reaffirm social norms.

Durkheim's second purpose was in identifying certain elements of religious beliefs that are common across different
cultures. A belief in a supernatural realm is not necessary or common among religions, but the separation of different
aspects of life, physical things, and certain behaviors into two categories -- the sacred and the profane -- is common.
Objects and behaviors deemed sacred were considered part of the spiritual or religious realm. They were part of
rites, objects of reverence, or simply behaviors deemed special by religious belief. Those things deemed profane
were everything else in the world that did not have a religious function or hold religious meaning. But while these
two categories are rigidly defined and set apart, they interact with one another and depend on each other for
survival. The sacred world cannot survive without the profane world to support it and give it life, and vice versa. In
general, those aspects of social life given moral superiority or reverence are considered sacred, and all other aspects
are part of the profane. For example, the Catholic Church respects the crucifix and the behaviors and actions
performed during mass as sacred, while other behaviors and objects are not. While Native American societies
differed greatly in the details, those religions also held certain objects and behavior sacred, such as certain animals
and the rituals and rites performed by the shaman. This division of things into two separate but interacting spheres is
common among all religions."...sacred things are simply collective ideals that have fixed themselves on material
objects."
Durkheim, concerned with social solidarity throughout his academic career, was primarily concerned with religion as
a functional source of social cohesion. As said before, religion acts to pull people together (mentally and physically, in
the form of religious services or assemblies). By doing so, religion is able to reaffirm collective morals and beliefs in
the minds of all members of society. This is important, because if left to their own for a long amount of time, the
beliefs and convictions of individuals will weaken in strength, and require reinforcement. Religion maintains the
influence of society -- whereas "society" represents the norms and beliefs held in common by a group of individuals.

"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."

"This system of conceptions is not purely imaginary and hallucinatory, for the moral forces that these things awaken
in us are quite real -- as real as the ideas that words recall to us after they have served to form the ideas."

"Since it is in spiritual ways that social pressure exercises itself, it could not fail to give men the idea that outside
themselves there exist one or several powers, both moral and, at the same time, efficacious, upon which they
depend."

"Since religious force is nothing other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan, and since this can be
represented in the mind only in the form of the totem, the totemic emblem is like the visible body the god."

"But from the fact that a 'religious experience,' if we choose it this, does exist and that it has a certain foundation ... it
does not follow that the reality which is its foundation conforms objectively to the idea which believers have of it."
"That which science refuses to grant to religion is not its right to exist, but its right to dogmatize upon the nature of
things and the special competence which it claims for itself for knowing man and the world. As a matter of fact, it
does not know itself. It does not even know what it is made of, nor to what need it answers."