Toward a Sociology of Religion

I was intrigued by a post on LinkedIn’s Sociology of Religion group in which a freshly minted Ph.D. candidate posed a query as to the nature of a sociology of religion given that most of the group’s posts seemed to be mainly concerned with debunking religion. The post was the kick in the pants that I needed to commit to writing my understanding of the relationship between social systems and religion, which is clearly crucial to an understanding of religion as a human phenomenon.

While my exposure to the literature of the Sociology of Religion is limited—and I may be a bit out of date—I remain intrigued by the classic works of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, as well as the more recent though not particularly contemporary work of Peter Berger. In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, written in 1912, Durkheim attributes to social organization all human efforts to organize and classify both the physical and spiritual worlds. Durkheim was part of a broader cadre of social scientists who were just beginning to use the results of field work among the so-called  “primitive” aboriginal peoples of Australia to understand the origin and, hence, the nature, of religious experience. Among these peoples, every phenomenon was classified according to some element of their totemic societies—a clan, a subclan, a phratry. So the sun, the moon, a species of tree or animal was associated with a clan or subclan. In other words, the cosmic structure is a mirror image of human social structure. Indeed, Durkheim came to the astounding conclusion that “the god of the clan was the clan itself.”

The manner in which culture within social groups affects the organization of the phenomenal world was taken up in more recent times by the premiere sociologist of religion, Peter Berger. In his 1967 work titled The Sacred Canopy, Berger notes that humans, unlike other animals, are not instinctually adapted to their lives in the world, but adapt culturally and socially. In effect, humans socially construct a world to which they adapt.

This socially constructed world has an ordering, or “nomizing,” impact. It provides the individual with a sense of common meaning and order. “Religion,” Berger claims, “is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is constructed.” The socially constructed world and the nomizing effect that it provides assume a sacred, cosmic status. The nomoi or ordering principles of the socially constructed world are apotheosized—given sacred, cosmic status. “Religion implies that human order is projected into the totality of being.” That is, the nomoi, the ordering principles, not only construct “the world as such,” but these socially constructed nomoi become "the cosmos as such.” Like for Durkheim, the cosmic order is a mirror image of the social order.

For me, the most profound analysis as it pertains to our contemporary western/American culture remains Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Writing at the turn of the 20^th century, Weber notes the disparity in the level of capitalist development between the more developed Protestant countries of Europe and their Catholic neighbors. Weber attributes the success of capitalism in Protestant countries to a Protestant theology, particularly as articulated by John Calvin and other “reformers,” that understands divine grace as predetermined and wholly dependent upon the God’s choice of the “elect.” There is nothing the individual can do to attain salvation. However, one must maintain trust in God’s grace by following one’s occupational calling and to understand the material rewards of that occupation as a demonstration, a kind of surety of God’s grace. Moreover, these material rewards are not to be used for one’s own enjoyment, but to further the glory of God, and therefore, they should be reinvested as a way of growing these rewards in further glory to God.

Of course, this theology not only advanced the capitalist ethic, but it also engendered a certain frugality bordering on asceticism. With the emergence of a more utilitarian and pragmatic ideology in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, this asceticism began to wane. It seems as if the Protestant notion that one is assured of election and a state of grace through the reward received from working at a calling eventually gives way to what we call “The American Dream.” In a certain respect, fulfilling the American Dream is the secular equivalent of achieving a state of grace.

In any case, we again witness the manner in which social structure and cosmic structure—sociology and theology—become mirror images. I would suggest that our “American Dream” is an apotheosis—a raising to cosmic status—of our individualist, capitalist social values…

…what Marx would have called the “superstructure.” But that’s another story.