Max Weber made an historical analysis of religion as a factor that changes societies. Although he studied the religions around the world in detail for many years, Weber became famous for his explanation of the emergence of Capitalism in the West through asceticism principle of the Protestant ethic. As also understood from the information given, the correct answer is A.

The information related to the other sociologists in the options is as follows:

Marx’s social conflict approach that considers religion as opium and consolation or, on rare occasions, a sort of protest. However, one should see that Marx’s analysis emphasizes that religion is principally used as a tool by powerful social classes in order to hide inequalities in labor class of the society.

Durkheim’s functionalist approach considers religion as the fundamental part of a society and focuses solely on solidarity and integrating functions of religion.

Among the leading theorists of the Phenomenological Approach, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue that religion helps people construct a universe of meaning in order to understand and interpret the world, and justify the authenticity and reality of those frames of meaning. They suggest that life would become meaningless and social stability would be disrupted without such universe of meaning.