Durkheim's Sociological Approach

This week’s readings were centered on Émile Durkheim’s sociological approach, Max Weber’s economic and political approach, and Robert Bellah’s ‘civil religion’. Fundamentally, Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life sought to explicate how the ‘divine’ arises in the human experience, how it is formulated, and most importantly, how it is maintained. Durkheim arranged the religious phenomena into two categories; beliefs and rites. One consisting of opinions and representations, while the latter being of modes of necessitated action, differing from moral action by its reverence to an object. From these categories, he further distinguishes two more that demonstrate the ‘special nature’ of the object expressed, which are the sacred and
Weber looked to explicate that the nature of capitalism that had been embraced by the western world, and how its origins could be traced to the protestant reformation. Weber held that regardless if one’s ideas are true or false, they are based on one’s subjective interpretation of reality, and therefore have the capacity to influence one’s behaviour in society. Being said, Weber held the economic effect of religious movements, such as Calvinism, with the power of asceticism (frugality), provided “sober, conscientious, and unusually industrious workmen, who clung to their work as to a life purpose willed by God”. This formulation were held to be, by Weber, the leading idea of a capitalistic economy, as the conception of labour was and could be then a means of “attaining certainty of grace”. That is why, in Weber’s view, religious values may “be so intimately intertwined with economic realities in a society that these features ought to not be
In his reading, Bellah aims to establish this notion by demonstrating the societal disposition towards religious tendencies, historical values and symbols present within American culture. The conception of ‘God’ for example, is arguably imbedded into the very fabric of what is called ‘America’. Whether it be President Kennedy’s inaugural address, or President Jefferson’s proclamation that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights”, Bellah looks to demonstrate the vagueness of the references presented within their respective contexts. At no point in either of their addresses (or of any subsequent presidents to follow) is there reference to a specific ‘God’ (Christian, Jewish, Hindu) or to a figure like Christ. This, in Bellah’s account, is due to the intersectional formulation of the of various faiths present within society, reinforcing common beliefs, such as God or Liberty, with national symbols and history. Bellah claims that this mentality consequently results in the formulation of a somewhat ‘Unitarian’ God, one that is concerned more so on “order, law and right…than salvation and love”, focusing more on the prosperation of the ‘American Way’ then the