The Functions of Religion (according to Durkheim)

1. Stability and cohesion – shared religion binds people closely together

a. Religion forms a balanced and cohesive moral community. It is a means of

protecting individuals from anomie, alienation and the threats of disruptive mass
movements and so maximises the individual’s potential for happiness
b. Shared religious experiences provide the social cement for group unity and
consensus

2. Social identity – shared religion gives people an identity and social membership

a. This is achieved through special naming ceremonies, in christening and baptism

in the Christian church. For Durkheim, group solidarity is affirmed and
heightened during collective ceremony and ritual
b. They represent the necessary power of the social group over the otherwise
isolated, anomic individual
c. Religion serves to integrate the person into the society. It is functionally useful
for people to grow up identifying with a particular place or nation, to strengthen
a person’s sense of national commitment, especially if either religion or nation
come under threat

3. Collective conscience – religion unites people in moral ways

a. The group affirms its belief in the central values through its commitment to the
religious system. These sentiments produce ‘value consensus’
b. Religion thereby generates and maintains the collective conscience. This was
observable in its effects and was open to scientific study just as other social
effects could be studied and analysed, by collecting relevant statistics, through
careful observation and recording or other experimental methods
c. Durkheim saw society as a moral community, whose members were socialised
into accepting appropriate patterns of behaviour over time. This is an unending
process since people are always being integrated into new groups, adopting
new norms, absorbing new values and adapting new patterns of behaviour
d. An orderly social life is only possible when people share moral values; in this
way, society becomes embedded in the individual

4. Socialisation and social control – religion represents the value system of the
society
a. It is a conservative force which contributes to moral and wider social order and
stability
b. Many cultural norms are given sacred legitimacy by religious beliefs, e.g. the
Ten Commandments provide a prescription for an orderly lifestyle. By
promoting such values through family, school and church, the process of
socialisation occurs
c. Appropriate modes of thinking and behaving are controlled in ways which will
promote the good, orderly society

5. Meaning and purpose – religion gives meaning and purpose to people’s lives
a. In the face of death, disease and the hazards of everyday living, people are
vulnerable to all kinds of disasters beyond their control. Religious beliefs offer
people comfort in times of crisis
 b. It is the institution which gives people the strength to continue and promotes the
long-term maintenance of society as a result

Points of Evaluation: Strengths of Durkheim’s Theory

1. The functionalists helped to re-establish interest in the analysis of religion. They put
it into a wider social context, to see its relations with other institutions in society.
Later theorists (such as Merton) developed additional concepts, such as those of
manifest functions, dysfunctions and functional alternatives; so that science,
nationalism, communism and even football, might be seen as serving as a functional
religious alternative for some.

2. Durkheim’s work is accepted as a brilliant sociological account. He showed the

inadequacies of earlier approaches and produced a more elaborate explanation.
This laid emphasis on the importance of establishing the origin of religion, which he
saw as the worship of society itself in group rituals and ceremonies.

3. He demonstrated how the collective features of religious activity are crucially

important for the members and for the society in providing stability and integration.
The functions of ritual were to assert the power of society over the individuals who
comprised it and so maintain the social solidarity of the social group. Religion was
not a vague fear of the unknown forces which surrounded them, but a relationship
between members of a community who needed institutions to protect its moral and
long term social life.

Criticisms of Durkheim

1. Durkheim’s analysis was of small traditional societies. His ideas have been criticised
as being inappropriate to complex modern societies. Evans-Pritchard argued that
there is no evidence that totemism arose in the way Durkheim speculated that it did,
or that other religions are ultimately derived from it.

2. He made use of ideas which were rather mysterious and difficult to prove in a
scientific way. The collective consciousness of the group, their social mind, was
described as the source of religion; it is hard to prove that every religious system is
indispensable for the maintenance of the whole society. If a religious group
abandons its presence in a society, it makes no significant difference.

3. Although he accepted that as a response to wider social changes, scientific thinking

will increasingly replace religious explanation, he did not consider religion from a
dysfunctional point of view.
a. Some religious movements may advocate revolutionary activity and others the
maintenance of class divisions. For example, during the Middle Ages, religious
beliefs motivated European Christians to organise the Crusades against
Muslims in the East.
b. In Northern Ireland religious identities have resulted in disharmony; in the
southern states of USA, the reactionary Ku Klux Klan movement has a religious
basis; in recent years there have been great divisions between clergy over
secular and theological issues which have led to acrimony.
c. In the 1990s there have been unresolved debates about whether or not the
Prince of Wales should, in a multi-cultural society, be described as Defender of
Faith when he ascends to the throne.
Source: Religion by Paul Selfe & Mark Starbuck