How if at all does Religion perform functions for contemporary British society
Emile Durkheim’s work The elementary forms of the religious life (1912) is commonly considered the single most influential study of the sociology of religion (Giddens 2001). In this he suggests that all religion, irrelevant of the differentiation of beliefs each may hold, plays a fundamental social function. By exploring his studies and that of those who followed him, by taking into account critics’ analysis of his work, I hope to discover to what extent this is true within modern British society. ... The first point to tackle is the definition of Religion itself. Durkheim (1961) defined religion as, “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”. ... By stating that religion ‘unites beliefs and practices into one single moral community’ makes two points. The first being that the community made is indeed a ‘moral’ one, which is an assumption and also subjective to our own views and opinions of what constitutes a ‘moral’ society. The second point being that by suggesting that religion forms a ‘community’ we are somewhat suggesting social cohesion which is a social function, and so it would be almost impossible to answer that religion performs no social function within modern society simply by our definition of religion, within the question. However purely by the fact that humans do not classify an individual’s beliefs and practices as a religion unless the same beliefs and practices are held and carried out by other people we will always have this same problem. We therefore also come across another problem that if religion is a group of people who share a similar set of beliefs, we can also spread this idea to more global and ‘non-divine’ concepts such as communism, nationalism and say that even the belief that science can ultimately solve all problems can be seen as a kind of faith and is essentially religious in character (Hamilton 1995). Durkheim’s studies were based on totemism within Aboriginal society, seen as the most simplistic view of religion, he decided that this was where it would be most apparent what social functions religion plays. ... Durkheim essentially claimed that religion played 3 key social functions, that of social cohesion, social control and providing a meaning and a purpose for the members of that ‘church’. He stated that the uniting factor that links all religion is that they all divide the world into the sacred and profane world. The sacred world consisting of gods, spirits, rites and objects all of which are superior to ourselves in dignity and power and are that which are treated as apart from the routine aspects of existence (Giddens 2001), as Durkheim defines it, “those to which the interdictions protect and isolate”.