Sociologists idea about the causes and consequences of religion are scattered ina variety of studies among different disciplines.  The origin of religion is veiled in mystery. Among the numerous explanations by social scientists, some appear more plausible than others, but even the best of them are not susceptible of scientific proof, and all remain in the realm of logical assumption.

In most text books on sociological study of religion, the cognitive (intellectualist) and emotional  Psychological aspects of religion are discussed together. Evans-Pritchard (1965) has provided a most readable discussion of the two streams of thought.

Intellectualist or cognitive theories of religion

Ideas about the origin and development of religion were initially based on the reports of sailors and adventurers about the nature of religion among the primitives. The Portuguese sailors had reported that the coastal Negro tribes of West Africa worshipped inanimate things and animals. Comte (1908) took up this theory and wrote that in due course fetishism was replaced by polytheism.

De Brosses  as early as 1760, advanced a theory that religion had its origin in fetishism (belief in magical fetishes or objects). This theory was superseded by the ghost theory and the soul theory. These theories are also known as intellectualist theories of religion, because both assume that the primitives are rational beings, although their efforts to explain natural phenomena are somewhat crude.

In terms of the chronology of ideas on religion, the nature-myth school came before the above-mentioned theories.

Max Muller, a German linguist propounded that ancient gods were universally personifications of natural phenomena. This school of thought came to be known as Nature-Myth school.  He held that grand natural objects gave people a feeling of the infinite. At the same time these objects acted as symbols of the infinite. The celestial bodies, as, sun, moon, stars, dawn and their attributes were thought of by the people in terms of metaphor and symbol. Max Muller[1] (1878) argued that with the passage of time the symbolic representations came to gain an independent identity of their own and became separated from that which they represented. The attributes or the symbols became personified as deities. Muller held that we could study the religion of early man by looking into linguistic etymological meaning of the names of gods and legends associated with them.

Herbert Spencer, Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang were the main critics of nature-myth theories. Not only did they criticise the philological and etymological approach to religion, they took an altogether different approach. Herbert Spencer and Edward Tylor focused on religious behaviour of the primitives. They believed that primitive societies offered an evidence of the earliest forms of religion. Spencer published his views in 1882, eleven years after Tylor published his book Primitive Culture in 1871.

Spencer[2] has forwarded what is popularly known as ghost theory which shows the primitive man was rational though with limited quantum of knowledge. They make reasonable, though weak, inferences with regard to natural phenomena like sun, moon, clouds and stars come and go, dreams and death. They saw duality in all these. For them, the dream-self moves about at night while the shadow-self acts by the day. The event of death is also considered by the primitives as a longer period of insensibility. According to Spencer, the appearance of dead persons in dreams is taken by the primitives to be the evidence of temporary after life. This leads to the conception of a supernatural being in the form of a ghost. According to Spencer, the idea of ghosts grows into the idea of gods and the ghosts of ancestors become divine beings. Spencer’s concludes that ‘ancestor worship is the root of every religion’.

In Primitive Culture, published in 1871 Edward B. Tylor emphasizes the idea of soul. His theory of religion is well known by the term ‘animism’, the word anima a Latin word meaning soul. This theory considers both the origin and development of religion. Experiences of death, disease, visions and dreams, according to Tylor, lead the primitives to think about the existence of an immaterial power, i.e., the soul an idea of belief in spiritual beings. This idea of soul is then projected on to creatures other than human and even to inanimate objects. Tylor says that these spiritual beings later develop into gods.

This theory was subscribed to by Comte and elaborated upon by the nineteenth century English anthropologist Sir John Lubbock, primitive man tends to endow natural phenomena with life and to ascribe personalities to them. These become super natural powers with which relationships similar to those existing between human beings are established. Lubbock[3] also contended that primitive man ascribes great power to deceased ancestors and hence practices ghost worship.

R.R. Marett, another of Tylor’s disciples, criticised the animistic theory and referred to R.H. Codrington’s Melanesian data and claimed that the primitive belief in an impersonal force preceded beliefs in spiritual beings. Marett called this impersonal force mana which may be considered as similar to the notion of Bonga (prevalent among many tribal groups in India) and argued that belief in mana had both historical and theoretical priority. Marett referred to the belief in mana as animatism. Though Marett did not as such speak against evolutionist theories, yet his criticism of Tylor’s work made other scholars question the correctness of evolutionist analysis of religion. It made them look more closely at material collected about primitive societies. Later this merged [4]in the functionalist approach to the study of religion. Golden weiser stated in his Anthropology, by juxtaposing mana and spirit and speculating as to which preceded which. The important points is that the nature of primitive religion or, for that matter, of any religion, cannot be explained by reference to the concept of spirit alone; this idea must be supplemented by that of mana or power.

There are evolutionist theories which claimed that religion originated in magic and supersition. An important contribution in this area was made by Sir James Frazer in his book, “the Golden Bough”. It is argued by some scholars that magic[5] rather than religion is the more primitive way of dealing with crisis. Sir James Frazer,1922 in his work, The Golden Bough, offered an evolutionary understanding of the mental development of primitive people. He argued that from a dependence on magic, one would turn to religion and then eventually to scientific thinking. Frazer also stressed the role of religious specialists such as magicians and priests in dealing with the world of the supernatural. He distinguished between Homeopathic or imitative magic [6]and Contagious[7] magic. For Frazer, magic, like religion, was basically a means of coming to terms with the supernatural and gaining control over the environment that may have spelt danger or disaster for primitive people. It is when magic and associated rituals failed that primitive people’s thoughts, according to Frazer, turned to the possibility of a far greater force being operative in the world of nature or religious worship. The important thing to, however, remember here is that for Frazer there was a stage beyond religion. This was science. When one started understanding these ‘forces’ with greater scientific rationality, Frazer believed that the evolution of the human intellect would be complete.

Psycho-biological Processes or emotional theories

Taken as a response and reaction to extreme intellectualist viewpoints, emotionalist theories provide a kind of balance and show that emotions are an important part of religion. These theories also developed the background which served as a base for later scholars, who came to be known as functionalists and structuralists.

Initially, A.E. Crawley, questioned the logic of Tylor’s view about the source of the idea of soul. According to Crawley[8] (1909), forwarding a fear theory, the idea of soul originated from sensation whereas the existence of spirits is only in the minds of people. Crawley holds that religion or superstition pervades the mental make-up of primitive people. They live in the world of mystery where subjective and objective realities are all mixed up into one. The main force behind primitive thought is fear of the danger. For example, while eating, the primitives feel particularly prone to danger. This is the reason why they have so many taboos around food. The idea of a world of sprits is the result of a sense of danger and the feelings of fear. For him, wherever people face greater dangers, they are that much more religious. Interestingly, according to him, women face more dangers than men do, they are therefore more religious than men are. For him, God is an outcome processes of psychology and biology.

American anthropologists as R.H. Lowie, Paul Radian and Goldenweiser also wrote about religion in primitive societies.

R.H. Lowie (1925), basing his thinking on his study of the Crow Indians[9], considers that for the primitives, religion is a matter of feelings. Emotional responses of amazement and awe is characterized as religion. For Lowie, if magic is associated with emotion, it is to be called religion. Without emotional content magic is, for Lowie, akin to science. Another American anthropologist, Paul Radin, who studied the Winebago Indians[10], also emphasised that religious feelings arise and are centered around beliefs and customs. This sensitivity to belief and custom is expressed in a thrill. Paul Radin (1938) considers magic as religion only if it arouses the religious feelings. In the absence of religious emotion, magic is only folklore. Similarly, Goldenweiser (1921) describes two spheres of religion, namely, magic and religion. He holds that in both magic and religion the thrill is experienced. Well-known anthropologist Malinowski[11] held that both religion and magic originate and function under conditions of emotional stress. Magic is used by the primitive as we use scientific knowledge today for overcoming practical difficulties in their day to day life. This relieves the tension which is built up because of a sense of weakness or inability of human beings to achieve success in their pursuits. They can then continue to pursue their normal activities. The performance of religious and magical rites help them to dispel their fears and emotional stress. In the early part of twentieth century, it was common to find scholars following this stream of thought about religion and magic. Evans-Pritchard (1965) calls it the Tylor-Frazer formula.  

Freud[12] who was influenced by anthropological writings on religion and who, in turn, influenced the writings of sociologists and anthropologists, contributed a great deal to evolutionist theory. Freud also finds that his neurotic (emotionally unstable) patients deal with harsh realities of life with the help of compulsive acts and protective wall of mere thought. Freud gives us three phases of thought. The first one is the phase of narcissism, that is, love for one’s own body. The second phase is that of object finding when one is dependent on one’s parents. The third one is the phase of maturity. In this state, the person is at one with the reality and adapts to it without problems. Corresponding to these phases, Freud gives three stages of intellectual development. These are the animistic (or the magical), the religious and the scientific. The child is unable to achieve everything through motor activity and, as in magic, imagines she/he has achieved the desired goal by substituting thought for action. A neurotic person also behaves in the same manner, substituting thought for action. Having thus explained the animistic stage, Freud discusses the second stage. For him religion, like magic, is an illusion and it comes out of the feelings of guilt. Freud has a very interesting story to account for the origin of religion. He refers to the ape-like phase of human development when the leader of the horde, a father figure, ruled over the group, keeping all the females for his own use. His sons rebelled against the father and wanted the females for themselves. They killed the father and ate him up. Later they repented and suffered the feelings of guilt. As a result they put a taboo on eating their totem (an animal or bird), which was also a sign for their father and his authority. They began to ceremonially worship the totem and thus originated religious rites. Secondly, the sons put a taboo on sexual relationship between mother and sons. This is known as the rule of incest. According to Freud as totem is the origin of religion, incest is the origin of culture. He elaborates these ideas in his theories of Oedipus complex[13] and Electra complex[14]. This is all illusion, so, for Freud religion is also an illusion. Freud has influenced anthropological writing. For example, M.E. Spiro (1984) has written a book, Oedipus in the Trobriands, which shows that Freud’s evolutionist ideas are still being worked on.

FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF RELIGION

Another school of thought considered the religious rites as basically a creation of society rather than a product of an individual’s reasoning or feeling. These approaches considered religion important because of the role it played in maintaining tradition and sense of community. Giving up intellectualist and emotionalist interpretations, these theories emphasised the functional aspect of religion and did not much dwell on its origin and progress from one stage to another.

One widely accepted theory derives religion from rites and ceremonies rather than from belief in the supernatural. The latter, according to thesis theory, is the effect, not the cause. Perhaps the earliest exponent of this theory was W. Robertson Smith. In his classic worked, The Religion of the Semites, which was published 1894, he concluded that ancient religions consisted primarily “institutions and practices,” i.e. of rites and ceremonies and the myths, i.e. beliefs and creeds, were an outgrowth of these. Smith’s theory had a profound influence upon subsequent research in religion. It served as a basis for the formulation of the sociological theory of religion, of which Durkheim became an outstanding exponent. Durkheim[15] in his book, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) arose to explain the positive functions of religion for society.  Durkheim found the sacred-profane dichotomy to be at the centre of any religion. The division of religious phenomena into two fundamental categories, namely, beliefs and rites, corresponds to the difference between thought and action. Durkheimian argument that religion has continued to survive all along, because it has fulfilled certain needs. Religion finally functions for the society, i.e. transforms it into a moral community. In the guise of religion, it is the society which is being worshipped.

Durkheim’s theory served as a basis for a number of important studies which further developed the concept of the social origin of religion. One of these is Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion by Jane Harrison, Influenced by Smith and Durkheim, She arrived at the conclusion that the belief in a god originated in the ritual, the dance, and the song, or hymn induced by the major crises in life, such as birth, initiation and death.

The American anthropologists, Chapple and Coon in their Principles of Anthropology, asserted that religious institutions arise as a result of crises during which the necessary equilibrium is lost and of the consequent attempt to regain equilibrium. Another significant sociological theory, based exclusively on a study of the Old Testament, was advanced by the English sociologist Louis Wallis. In his Sociological Study of the Bible, he concluded that the Hebrews arrived at a monotheistic belief only after a series of struggles with other tribes and class conflicts between the poor agriculturists and the wealthy town dwellers. Wallis discerned in social conflict the most important factor in the evolution of religion.

Under the banner of functionalism, Malinowski criticised Durkheim’s views on religion. Unlike Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown was heavily influenced by Durkheim’s ideas. Malinowski, like Durkheim, was interested in the origin and development of religion. Malinowski argued that the feelings of fear, anger, sadness, etc. that arose in the mind of primitive people on such occasions were overcome by resorting to religious activities or the performance of certain rituals.

Not content with simply observing and recording data about primitive societies, Malinowski’s successor, Radcliffe-Brown, tried to analyse ethnographic data by using sociological concepts. He was attracted to the Durkheimian sociology. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown tried to make Durkheim’s theory of totemism into a more comprehensive view of religion. In an article, ‘The Sociological Theory of Totemism’, Radcliffe-Brown (1929) showed totemism to be a particular form of universalistic law operating in human society. The universal law is that anything related to material or non-material well being of a society is an object of religious attitude. For example, those who depend on dairy products have a ritual attitude to dairy animals.

Following the tradition of Durkheim, a definition of religion in terms of its social function is in the work of Thomas Luckmann titled The Invisible Religion (1967). For him, religion refers to the capacity of human beings to transcend their biological nature by constructing a universe of objective, all-embracing, and morally-binding meanings. As a result, religion becomes not only a social phenomenon (in Durkheim’s sense) but also the ‘anthropological phenomenon’, because it embraces the entire ‘non-biological human existence.’ Thus, for Luckmann, everything genuinely human is religious, and the non-religious phenomena are those which are grounded in the ‘animal nature’ of man.

Evans-Pritchard criticised the functionalist approach to the study of religion. In addition he considered the possibilities for showing that certain religious systems are found in societies of a particular type.

This was initially undertaken by Levy-Bruhl and later Evans-Pritchard also added new ideas to the sociological study of religion.

M.N. Srinivas. Srinivas was a student and colleague of Radcliffe-Brown and as such in his study of religion he used Durkheim’s ideas via Radcliffe-Brown’s theory of ritual.

WEBERIAN THEORY OF RELIGION

Max Weber’s theory of the interplay of social and economic forces is included among the sociological interpretations of the development of religion. Max Weber[16] (1864-1920) to demonstrated that religious ideas can change the economic order. In the eyes of Max Weber, religious ideas can act as powerful force in determining the course of the economic order. Through his ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ (1958, 1905), Max Weber proposed the thesis that various protestant sects that emerged during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, aided through their doctrines, the emergence of modern rational capitalism. Max Weber’s thesis was part of a larger intellectual debate among scholars, regarding the role of ideal and material factors in historical development.

The doctrines of the protestant sects, in particular Calvinism, created new attitudes toward work, money and pleasure. These new doctrines marked a significant departure from what has been hitherto preached by the Catholic Church. These doctrines were accepted by the emerging classes in Europe, after the break-down of feudal order, which combined hard work with asceticism. In other words, believers of these protestant doctrines worked hard but restrained themselves from material pleasures and luxury. This resulted in the accumulation of wealth (capital), which spurred the growth of rational industrial capitalism.

Marxist theory of Religion

Karl Marx, the German scholar, has provided a conflict perspective of religion. Marx saw religion as a reflection of society and not as an expression of “primitive’’ or psychological needs as other theorists of his time presented. Marx stressed the negative side or the dysfunction’s of religion as a social institution. Marx saw religion as serving the interests of the ruling class at the expense of the powerless masses. “Religion,” he wrote, “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people” (1848). Marx argued that just as a painkiller masks the symptoms of disease, silencing the sick person into the illusory belief that he or she is hail and hearty, so religion masks the exploitation of workers, lulling them into the false belief that existing social arrangements are just - or if not just, inescapable.

Marx developed his understanding of religion mainly from Prussia. In Prussia, the state defended the Protestant Christian religion. Protestant Christian religion, in that context, acted as an ideology for the new class which arose at the break-up of feudalism in Europe. Since Protestantism helped the growth of capitalism, the State of Prussia supported it. Marx also argued that religion is an illusion which veils the real exploitative conditions in society.

Marx perceived religion as the personification of alienation: the selfestrangement people experience when they feel they have lost control over social institutions. It is particularly characteristic of the capitalist society. The term ‘alienation’ was used by him to describe the modern worker’s experience of being nothing more than a `cog in a machine.’ He also employed this concept to describe what he saw as the dehumanising effect of religion.

Religion stabilizes, the social order, by veiling the exploitation and misery of the capitalist economic order.

Phenomenological[17] theory of religion

The basic aspects of Berger’s theoretical framework were laid down in his book titled The Social Construction of Reality (1966), which he wrote jointly with Thomas Luckmann. Berger’s as applied to the realm of religion were explained in his The Sacred Canopy (1967), which was later published (in 1969) under the title The Social Reality of Religion . Berger’s work[18] on religion begins with locating its place in the enterprise of world-building. Every human society is concerned with the task of constructing a world around it – understanding the meaning of various phenomena, drawing relationships between them, formulating the theories of causality. Berger’s concept of religion follows from this understanding of society as a world-building and world-ordering activity. For Berger, thus, religion has to be seen in the milieu of the relationship between the ‘socially constructed order’ (i.e., nomos) and the ‘fundamental meanings inherent in the universe’ (i.e.,cosmos). Berger looks for a substantive definition of religion, i.e. define religion in terms of its substance, in terms of what it has. Religion is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established. Put differently, religion is cosmization in a sacred mode.

Promoting the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, Berger spoke of the impact of the ‘pluralization of life-worlds’ of people on their belief systems. His thesis was that the rise of pluralism undermines the set of stable beliefs. When a society has multiple beliefs, thoughts and notions, it means that it will not have any set of stable beliefs, since newer and newer ‘products of mental work’ will keep on surfacing, and also, will become outdated over time. It is a dialectical process. The forces that create plurality go hand-in-hand with that of modernity. Under the combined impact of plurality and modernity, the ‘sacred canopy’, i.e. the realm of religion, will become a ‘less well-established entity, one of precarious existence’. Berger saw an intrinsic link between the processes of modernization and secularization, and what linked them was ‘pluralism’.

Berger has made a tremendous impact in the sociology of religion. Wood (2001) writes that though Berger’s career began four decades ago (his first book appeared in 1961), it is now that some of the themes on which he wrote earlier have been taken up into the mainstream of the sociology of religion. An outstanding example is of the concept of de-secularization, on which Berger started writing in 1977, which is now at the centre of the debate whether the world is becoming increasingly ‘godless’ or ‘god-full’. Similarly, Berger has been interested in religion and globalization, a topic that has become popular in the last ten years or so. His concept of the ‘pluralization of life-worlds’ has also been picked up for further analysis. In fact, some scholars think that it provides a ‘new paradigm’ for understanding the contemporary world.