When sociologists study religion, they do so as unbiased scientists and not as believers (or disbelievers) in any particular faith. This stance has a number of implications: Sociologists are not concerned with whether religious beliefs are true or false. The sociological perspective regards religions as socially constructed by human beings.When dealing with religion, sociologists mainly try to understand how religions shape society and conversely, how the historical and contemporary social conditions shape religions. Thus, according to sociological approach, religion should primarily be taken a social rather than theological or psychological phenomenon. Since religions vary widely in substantive teachings and practices, most sociological definitions attempt to identify religion in terms of functions rather than substance. Thus, sociology focuses on the social consequences and correlates of religion but no sociological explanations suggest the truth or falsity of any religious belief.

Sociologists define religion as a cultural system of commonly shared beliefs and rituals that provide a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose by creating an idea of reality that is sacred, all encompassing the supernatural. These are three key elements in this definition:
1. Religion is a form of culture which consists of the shared beliefs, values, norms, and
material conditions that create a common identity among a group of people. Religion has all these characteristics.
2. Religion involves beliefs that take the form of ritualized practices-special activities in which believers take part and that identify them as members of the religious community.
3. Religion provides a feeling that life is ultimately meaningful. It does so by explaining coherently and compellingly what transcends or overshadows everyday life in ways that other aspects of culture (such as an educational system or a belief in democracy) cannot.

Durkheim is generally considered the first sociologist who analyzed religion in terms of its societal impact. Above all, he believed religion is about community: It binds people together (social cohesion), promotes behavior consistency (social control) and offers strength during life’s transitions and tragedies (meaning and purpose). By applying the methods of natural science to the study of society, Durkheim held that the source of religion and morality was the collective mind-set of society and that cohesive bond of social order result from common values that need to be maintained to sustain social stability.

Emile Durkheim believed that social life was impossible without the shared values and moral beliefs that form the collective conscience. In their absence, there would be no social order, social control, social solidarity or cooperation. In short, there would be no society. Religion reinforces the collective conscience. The worship of society strengthens the values and moral beliefs that form the basis of social life. Durkheim emphasized the importance of collective worship. The social group comes together in religious rituals of drama and reverence. Together, its members express their faith in common values and beliefs. In this highly charged atmosphere of collective worship, the integration of society is strengthened. Members of society express, communicate, and understand the moral bonds, which unite them. As a result, it could be said that from Durkheim’s point of view, when people recognize or worship supernatural entities, they are really worshipping their own society.

Durkheim pointed out three major functions of religion for the operation of society:

1. Social cohesion. Religion unites people through shared symbols, values and norms.

2. Social control. Every society uses religious imagery and rhetoric to promote conformity. Societies infuse many cultural norms-especially mores relating to marriage and reproduction-with religious justification.

3. Providing meaning and purpose. Religious beliefs offer the comforting sense that the vulnerable human condition serves some greater purpose.

Durkheim’s sociology of religion was met with criticism. In the more empirically oriented critiques, questions were asked about the validity of Durkheim’s work, especially related to his book on the elementary forms of the religious life. In this book, Durkheim based his analyses on collected ethnographic material on totemism in Australia, material that is considered insufficient by today’s standards. What is more, the material he was criticized for was probably untypical Australian case. Questions have also been raised if it is possible to extend the definition of the function of religion in a pre-modern society in Australia to the function of religion everywhere else in the world, and at all times. The theoretical critique has primarily been directed against Durkheim’s theory of society. Durkheim was influenced by his contemporaries’ view of society as an organism. According to this idea, society was perceived as an organic system where each part has functions that contribute to the maintenance of the system. It is difficult to explain such functions without including a conscious purpose. In this way, Durkheim’s theory ends in teleology, where he presumes the existence of some form of higher intelligence that creates aspects of society, which serve some purposes. Durkheim’s functionalist analysis contends that religion represents the collective life of a society. The major weakness of this approach, however, is its tendency to downplay religion’s dysfunctions especially the capacity of strongly held beliefs to generate social conflict.

Social conflict theory has always focused heavily on the differential distribution of resources as reflected in the socioeconomic class structure of society. Unlike functionalist theory, conflict theory sees order and harmony as superficial entities. It claims that underneath a surface of apparent harmony, there is a form of balance of power or oppression. As a result, conflict theory looks at existing social conditions and social institutions with suspicion.

Marxist scholars emphasize religion’s role in justifying the political status quo by cloaking political authority with sacred legitimacy, and thereby making opposition to it seem immoral. The concept of alienation is an important part of Marx’s thinking, especially in his ideas of the origin and functions of religion. Alienation is the process by which people lose control over the social institutions they themselves invented. People begin to feel like strangers (aliens) in their own world. Marx further believed that religion is one of the most alienating influences in human societies, affecting all other social institutions and contributing to a totally alienated world. According to Marx, “Man makes religion, religion does not make man”. The function of God thus was invented to serve as the model of an ideal human being. People soon lost sight of this fact, however, and began to worship and fear the ideal they had created as if it were a separate, powerful supernatural entity. Thus, religion, because of the fear people feel for the god they themselves have created, serves to alienate people from the real world. Marx saw religion as the tool that the upper classes used to maintain control of society and to dominate the lower classes.

The social-conflict paradigm of Marx highlights religion’s support for social hierarchy. Religion, as claimed by Marx, serves ruling elites by legitimizing the status quo and diverting people’s attention from the social inequities of society. Most religions create or reinforce systems of stratification. To this extent, religion is a form of alienation; it is a symptom of social malformation that disguises the exploitative nature of capitalist society. Above all, for Marx, religion has an ideological character, especially considering its part in maintaining capitalist society. For Marx, religion is an ideological apparatus that the upper class uses to maintain control of society and to dominate the lower classes.

Marx saw religious belief as an illusion attempting to justify existing arrangements in society and encouraging people to accept them. He saw religion doing this in two ways. First, religion justifies existing inequalities in income and power in society by explaining the position on the rich and poor as “the will of God”. For example, the Hindu religion provides a religious justification for the inequalities of the Indian caste system, and the Bible is riddled with quotations such as ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven’. As a result, the poor are more likely to accept their position in society. Second, Marx believed religion provided comfort for the poor, and drew their attention away from their present misery and the inequalities and injustices of this world with promises of a future, golden life after death. In this way, the poor are encouraged to put off the pursuit of personal happiness and rewards in this life for some future reward in heaven.

Marx’s analysis of religion has been met by critique. Regarding the content of religion, Marx stresses that religion is illusory because it reflects a reality that is based on social class relationships while it attempts to hide class interests. In this way, he dismisses the reasons with which the believers themselves justify their actions. Marx also concludes with a reductionist argument where religion is merely the reflection of societal forces. Besides, there are two difficulties with the dominant ideology theory of Marx about religion. One is that religion at times provided the vehicle for revolt by the masses. Until the 18th century, virtually the only occasions when peasants or urban workers took part in large-scale revolts was in the form of religious movements, especially millennial movements propagating a new revelation. The second difficulty is that historically the dominant ideology has had a stronger effect on the dominant classes than on their subordinates.

Weber theorized that Calvinism fostered the Protestant ethic of hard work and asceticism and that Protestantism was an important influence on the development of capitalism. Calvinism is rooted in the concept of predestination, which means that before people are born, some of them are selected for heaven and others for hell. Nothing anyone does in this world, Calvinists believe, can change this. The Calvinists consequently were eager to find out whether they were among those chosen for salvation. Worldly success—especially the financial success that grew out of strict discipline, hard work, and self-control—was regarded as proof that a person was among the select few. Money was accumulated not to be spent but to be displayed as proof of being among the chosen. Capitalist virtues became Calvinist virtues. It was Weber’s view that even though capitalism existed before Calvinis influence; it blossomed only with the advent of Calvinism.

Durkheim saw religion as a source of social stability. On the other hand, German sociologist and political economist Max Weber believed religion was a precipitator of social change. Unlike Marx, Weber rejected the view that religion is always shaped by economic factors. Weber argued that, in some circumstances, religion can lead to social change: Although shared religious beliefs might integrate a social group, those same beliefs may have reflections which in the long term can produce changes in society. When comparing Weber and Durkheim, one might start simply by noting that whereas Durkheim was interested in the generic notion of religion (specifically the classification of the sacred and profane), Weber was concerned with the historical and comparative importance of religions. Durkheim famously observed it to consist of a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things. Weber, by contrast, declared in The Sociology of Religion that defining religion is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this. Weber’s writings on religion differ from those of Durkheim in that they concentrate on the connection between religion and social change, something to which Durkheim gave little attention. They contrast with the work of Marx, because Weber argues that religion is not necessarily a conservative force; on the contrary, religiously inspired movements have often produced dramatic social transformations. Thus, Protestanism (particularly Puritanism) was the source of the capitalistic outlook found in the modern West.

Berger and Luckmann have put forward a phenomenological view of religion: Religion is produced by members of society subjectively interpreting and giving meaning to the world around them. According to Berger and Luckmann, religion helps to build, maintain and legitimate universes of meaning. Throughout human history religion has played a decisive part in the construction and maintenance of universes. A universe of meaning requires constant legitimation: It needs repeated reinforcement and justification. Members of society must be told and re-told that their universe of meaning is real, true, correct, and “legitimate”. Without this support, a universe of meaning would tend to crumble, life would become meaningless, and the stability of society would be threatened. According to Luckmann, the function of religion can be understood to reduce uncertainty and complexity, to determine which seems to be indeterminate, and to make accessible what seems to be inaccessible. The supernatural dimension of religion, therefore, comes in handy because it serves to reduce complexity.

The phenomenological approach has been criticized on a number of counts. One view is that it is guilty of “cognitive reductionism”, and places too great emphasis on subjective meanings of culture as well as assuming that there is a common culture shared by all members of society. Also challenged is the assumption that religion is, in fact, a universal human need when some people appear to live fulfilling lives without religious belief. A further criticism is that, in common with many functionalists, this approach neglects to examine the conflict that sometimes rages between and within religious faiths. Besides, rather like functionalists, they tend to assume that religion unites society and they neglect examples of societies where religion is divisive or causes conflict. Furthermore, they tend to think that religious beliefs are widely held, and they
fail to account for continued existence of societies where many members are indifferent to religion. 

The approach developed by Stark and Bainbridge used the exchange theory to explain religious behavior of individuals as based on the principle that all human interactions can be treated as a form of exchange. They rely on the basic principle of exchange theory that humans seek what they perceive to be rewards and try to avoid what they perceive to be costs. Stark and Bainbridge, in their rational choice theory, suggest that religion answers universal questions and it offers compensators that meet universal human needs. According to them, religion can neither disappear nor seriously decline. In their rational choice theory, focusing on the compensators, religious organizations become an important basic institution. Religious organizations of all kinds become the source of particular kinds of compensators; through their mediation of the supernatural, they offer answers to the existential questions that face us all. Hence for Stark and Bainbridge, religions are defined as human organizations primarily engaged in providing general compensators based on supernatural assumptions.

Rational choice theory has also been met with critiques at some points. There are, indeed, many aspects, which appear problematic such as the fundamental assumption that all humans by nature desire answers to existential and ultimate issues. This overlooks the fact that such desires may not be the product of human nature but socially determined and culturally variable. Moreover, seeking great and difficult rewards, human beings, Stark and Bainbridge assert, simply imagine supernatural exchange partners who can deliver these rewards with no account of why this should be so. The underlying assumption seems to lie in the commitment to the use of the approach of exchange theory. Since all human interaction is some form of exchange, rewards can only be obtained through entering into exchange relationships. If one can enter into exchange relationships with certain beings to obtain rewards of a general type, then these beings must have a will and purposes like those of human beings and must, therefore, have the characteristics of gods. None of this is, however, clearly stated. Last but not least, it can be said that rational choice theory ignores the strength of mainstream/dominant religion in a society, which mostly bans competition between different religions or interpretations of the faith.

Some contend that in democracies, pluralism requires becoming increasingly neutral on matters of faith. To the extent, the secularization thesis involves three propositions:

1. Differentiation of secular spheres from religious institutions and norms. Various secular spheres such as politics, economics, law, science, art, etc., could come fully into their own and become differentiated from each other.

2. General decline of religious beliefs and practices. Evidence from European societies showed that the closer people were involved in industrial production, the less religious they became.

3. Privatization or marginalization of religion to a private sphere. This refers to the process of religious individuation based on the freedom of conscience.

Classical secularization theory has been criticized by some social scientists when it became clearly evident that religion just was not going away. Because it has been the revival of religiosity from the late 1960s onwards, there have been so many critics of the secularization thesis. Opponents of the secularization thesis point to the diversity and dynamism of new religious movements and argue that religion and spirituality remain a central facet of modern life. The present rising position of religion throughout the world is much more complex than the secularization theory suggests. Opponents of the secularization theory underline that religion remains an important force although it takes new and unfamiliar forms in modern times.

Differences among fundamentalist movements are nevertheless divided into four dimensions of this form. First is the proclamation by the charismatic prophet or whatever visionary: the cry for a people to return to a tradition lost, to reclaim the values of some earlier, supposedly nobler and more pastera, as a sign for the major realignment to come. Second, there must be the mythos of how things went unfavorable and led to the current undesirable state of things, such as a moral breakdown” or “values corruption”, steeped in religious metaphors. Third, the fundamentalist movement must draw clear continuities between the tradition lost and itself as the solution for restoration. Fourth, and just as important, while the proposed changes are to be accomplished in the name of the noble tradition, they are to rely on modern means, from military to educational to mass media avenues.