“Describe the functional analysis of religion given by Durkheim. Is this analysis applicable to the modern industrialized societies?” (1993)
Émile Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), asked not whether religion is true but what it does. From the totemism of the Australian Arunta, he concluded that religion is society worshipping itself. Whether that still holds in secular, plural industrial societies is the second part of the question.
Durkheim’s functional analysis
Religion is “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things… which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them.” The sacred/profane division, not belief in gods, is its essence. The totem is the emblem of the clan, so the sacred is society transfigured.
Its functions:
- Cohesive: shared rites bind members into a moral community and reaffirm collective conscience.
- Disciplinary: taboos and ascetic rites train the individual in self-restraint and social obligation.
- Revitalising: periodic ceremonies renew collective sentiments that would otherwise fade.
- Euphoric: piacular (mourning) rites restore confidence after crises.
- Cognitive: categories of time, space, class and causality are born in religious thought, so religion is the ancestor of science.
Is it applicable to modern industrial societies?
Arguments against
- Secularisation: Bryan Wilson (Religion in Secular Society, 1966) argued that religion has lost social significance as science, the state and professions took over its functions.
- Pluralism: Peter L. Berger (The Sacred Canopy, 1967) held that competing faiths dissolve the single shared canopy Durkheim assumed. Globally, the religiously unaffiliated rose from 23.3% to 24.2% of the world population between 2010 and 2020 (Pew Research Center, 2025), largely through people leaving Christianity in the West.
- Religion divides as well as unites. In India, Pew’s 2021 survey found 84% calling respect for all religions essential to being Indian. Yet 86% of Hindus said their close friends were mainly from their own community, and large majorities opposed inter-religious marriage. Religion integrates groups but can segregate society, a point Durkheim’s clan model misses.
- Karl Marx would add that religion legitimises inequality rather than expressing a consensual society.
Arguments for
- Durkheim himself expected “old gods” to give way to new sacred forms, above all the cult of the individual and human rights.
- Robert N. Bellah (“Civil Religion in America”, 1967) found a civil religion of flags, inaugurations and national martyrs. India’s Republic Day rituals and the observance of Constitution Day (since 2015) treat the Constitution as a sacred text.
- Thomas Luckmann (The Invisible Religion, 1967) traced religion into privatised meaning-systems. Grace Davie (1990) described Britain as “believing without belonging”.
- Berger later withdrew his thesis (The Desecularization of the World, 1999). In India, 97% say they believe in God (Pew, 2021), and mass pilgrimages such as the Maha Kumbh 2025 show ritual renewing collective identity on a huge scale.
Conclusion
Durkheim’s analysis applies to modern societies in modified form. The single church-like moral community has fragmented, but the sacred has migrated: into nation, constitution, individual rights and identity politics. His method stays valid, and his assumption of one unifying religion does not. The sacred now integrates particular communities as often as it unites the whole.