A concept from Emile Durkheim on why our secular world might be more sociologically religious than we think.

Summary

Emile Durkheim had a very broad conception of religion as a central catalyst of society’s function — religion was a means for collective belonging and collective consciousness to manifest in the world. We may want to reconsider how we conceive of religion and see the religious instinct occupying the majority of civilized life in the 21st century.

Overview

Emile Durkheim’s definition of religion.
Religion is a natural manifestation of society’s goals within human nature.
How a broad view of religion includes many groups and may actually help us engage as a society more meaningfully.

Introduction — Psychology Versus Sociology

When someone thinks of the historic development of psychology, they most likely think of Sigmund Freud. When someone thinks of the field of sociology?

Well, most people probably don’t think of the field of sociology.

Psychology has an aura of prestige — it’s practical, it’s effective, and it speaks directly into the world that we care about the most: My world.

Sociology feels more like psychology’s older brother that never went to parties and stayed in their room reading weird books. Psychology is academic and scientific while also being cool. Sociology is just something that people have heard of because it is a degree option at some universities.

So, we know Freud, but we don’t know Durkheim.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Durkheim

This is probably fine because, like Freud, Durkheim was a catalyst for a very meaningful, necessary, and impactful field, but most of his contributions have amounted to conjectures that everyone moved on from.

An important difference from Freud, however, is that many of Freud’s theories were scientifically disproven (or, at least, questioned). For Durkheim, in the field of sociology, he had limited access to the world and history at large. As the content of societies through history has become more abundant, the perspectives have become richer. Durkheim wasn’t necessarily wrong, he was just a bit out of touch.

Yet, one of his primary contributions and emphases concerned religion and some of his proposals in this category may still bear contemplation. Emile Durkheim’s old take on religion may deserve a comeback.

Because our supposedly secular world might actually still be a very religious one.

Part One — Durkheim’s Definition of Religion

A good place to start would be with how Durkheim defined religion:

A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things (symbols, objects, or concepts that are set apart and deserving of elevation or reverence) which unite into one single moral community those who adhere to the beliefs and practices together.

A bit loquacious, yes. But there are several key components to this definition:

Beliefs (theory, ideas, worldview, and perspective) runs in parallel with practices (actions, ethics, processes, function).
Sacred things are much more mundane than we might assume — anything that captures or stands in for beliefs and practices is considered sacred according to Durkheim. This could be a text (ranging from the Quran or Bible all the way to a family scrapbook or the Declaration of Independence) or a prop or a piece of art.
Uniting a community that holds to this together; which, of course, could be a common religious community, but it could also be a family or friend group or local place or nation-state or — please tell me you saw this coming — a sports team.

Durkheim’s emphasis was to draw attention to how human beings have a seemingly natural disposition with society to group together and make survival easier — and this often takes place by collective ideas and behaviors drawn together by something that transcends the individuals themselves. Durkheim isn’t saying that everyone is secretly religious whether we admit it or not; Durkheim is making a case that we all have religious tendencies as a means toward achieving sociological coherency amongst other people who are also trying to survive and make sense of the world.

More specifically, from the book that Durkheim is most known for — The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life — he adds that all religions can be identified by three elementary forms:

(1) the tendency to divide the world into sacred and profane spheres (what is agreed upon and found good versus what is diminished, ostracized, or separated from);
(2) the formation of beliefs relative to those sacred things; and
(3) the development of a system of rites specifying the duties and obligations owed to sacred objects.

You have a group with ideas and principles that create forms of ritual conduct and ethical behaviors to regulate society.

If you are sensing that this is a bit broad or unorthodox from what you have in mind when you think about religion, well, then Durkheim has you right where he wants you. He is explicitly divergent and proclaimed his intention on being so because he was not a theologian. Durkheim didn’t even adhere to a classic form of religion. The only reason Durkheim gave religion any thought was because he was concerned about society — and he felt that religion was an essential part of society.

Especially religion as defined with such broad strokes.

Most people consider religion to be a system of ideas corresponding to an object of faith (God, nature, “the infinite,” et cetera); there’s a hierarchy that you have to agree to, beliefs you have to intellectually assent to, and then you are part of a defined tribe or body or membership.

Durkheim didn’t buy it.

Religion seemed to be more than some theoretical propositions that folks agree to and have stamped on their identity in order to be different than the secular world.

In fact, I think Durkheim would be a bit suspicious of how modern society uses the word ‘secular.’

When you have a group using ideas to manifest practices that regulate the existence of the group and create collective belonging amongst the group, that’s religion. According to Durkheim, the modern vestige of the scientific community would technically be a religion. The materialist-atheist tribe, the nation-state and its vast amount of enterprises, an extended family system, a communal friend group, and the wondrous world of sports — they all fit the definition.

Durkheim’s point?

Religion is a natural — even inevitable — part of society.

In fact, Durkheim argued that religion is the central engine that makes society into what it is; a host of the collective conscious that undergirds human experience.

Part Two — What Qualifies as a Religion? And What’s the Point?

In order to understand how Durkheim viewed religion, one has to acknowledge his view of human nature and society:

To be human is to belong to a collective
To belong to the collective is to be constantly developed and influenced by the collective

Religion, for Durkheim, begins to appear less like a specific kind of social institution or organization with some sort of specific disposition toward transcendence and more as the existence of social institutions as a whole. Essentially, humans have a ‘religious’ inclination as a way of existing.

We exist as a collective.

Religion is how the collective gets expressed, formed, and understood.

Sometimes this looks like a formal church or highly ritualistic organization with a pantheon or something. But sometimes it appears as something that our society has begun to call secular. In fact, Durkheim notes that the two core components of religious function are, quite clearly, the same functions as a society. Religion and society both always have a:

System of Thought — which enriches and organizes communal life by creating a shared understanding. There’s a system of ideas that express the world and what it means to belong to it.
System of Practices — which provides actions that elicit communal life and regulate communal life.

Belonging is created through ritual conduct; which is based on the principles and ideas of existence; that create the means for how to act and live.

Humans do this by default.

The formal religions in dominant consciousness are examples of this reality.

But so is, well, just about everything else.

Some examples, as we’ve seen, are easy. The world of sports with their collective identity, ritualistic behavior, rhythmic customs, and effervescent energy. The doomsday cults, country clubs, and neighborhood associations.

But some are less obvious.

What about Wall Street? Or a nation-state’s patriotism? Or a social justice ideology? Or an education institution? Or pop culture’s syncopated dominance through the entertainment industry? Is the scientific community “religious?” What about the “Green Movement?” Is a family system, by Durkheimian technicalities, a religion?

While it is not quite fair to slap a definitive label on any one category or specific iteration, it is worth noting the general religious nature of all of these groups.

Shared understanding.
Through a system of ideas.
To provide ritual practices.
To regulate behavior.
And form a collective belonging.

Part Three — Modern Religion: Collective Belonging and Collective Consciousness

In Emile Durkheim’s phrasing, religion is a colloquial reality. It’s part of the dominant imagination of being alive. This means lots of things are religious, including formal Religions.

This seemed to be part of Durkheim’s agenda, even if it wasn’t his primary intent: To have us consider that maybe religion is not just reserved for bodies like Christianity or Islam — these formal institutions with overarching statements, prescribed rituals, and ceremonial episcopacies. Because, if true, this actually tells us something about society, in general, and human beings, in particular.

Society seeks to understand the world collaboratively and function accordingly.

If all of these religious expressions are simply manifestations of a single strain in society function, then even if specific religious trends fade, the social reality of religion is here to stay. Durkheim even remarked that this religious reality is eternal because society is always in a process of becoming and humans will always yearn for belonging. The sociological form of a specific religion in a moment and place will change, but the instinctive force will always remain. Our religious institutions are simply containers for the collective belonging and development of society. No matter what happens to the containers, the adventure will always remain. “The gospels,” Durkheim is famous for noting, “will always be re-written.”

None of this, it should be stated, is meant to insult humanity and culture. It’s not to say that religion is for the inchoate and that we’re all actually just playing the same sordid game.

No, rather, Durkheim’s point, in my opinion, was to say something about the reality of society.

The place of religion — the place of all these various ways we construct existence — might simply be a diverse range of attempts to be alive in the world.

That was Emile Durkheim’s take on religion.

In a divided and decaying culture, we may want to consider bringing this take on religion back.