INTRODUCING SOCIOLOGY Sociologists of religion, following Emile Durkheim, are interested in understanding this sacred realm which every society distinguishes from the profane. In most cases, the sacred includes an element of the supernatural. Often the sacred quality of a tree or a temple comes with the belief that it is sacred precisely because there is some supernatural force behind it. However, it is important to keep in mind that some religions like early Buddhism and Confucianism had no conception of the supernatural, but did allow sufficient reverence for things and persons which they considered sacred.
Studying religion sociologically lets us ask questions about the relationship of religion with other social institutions. Religion has had a very close relationship with power and politics. For instance, periodically in history there have been religious movements for social change, like various anti-caste movements or movements against gender discrimination. Religion is not just a matter of the private belief of an individual but it also has a public character.
And it is this public character of religion, which has an important bearing on other institutions of society. We have seen how sociology looks at power in a wide sense. It is, therefore, of sociological interest to look at the relationship between political and religious spheres. Classical sociologists believed that as societies modernised, religion would become less influential over various spheres of life.
The concept secularisation describes this process. Contemporary events suggest a persisting role of religion in various aspects of society. Why do you think this is so? A pioneering work by Max Weber ( - ) demonstrates how sociology looks at religion in its relationship to other aspects of social and economic behaviour.
Weber argues that Calvinism (a branch of Protestant Christianity) exerted an important influence on the emergence and growth of capitalism as a mode of economic organisation. The Calvinists believed that the world was created for the glory of God, meaning that any work in this world had to be done for His glory, making even mundane works acts of worship. More importantly, however, the Calvinists also believed in the concept of predestination, which meant that whether one will go to heaven or hell was pre-ordained. Since there was no way of knowing whether one has been assigned heaven or hell, people sought to look for signs of God’s will in this world, in their own occupations.
Thus if a person in whatever profession, was consistent and successful in his or her work, it was interpreted as a sign of God’s happiness. The money earned was not to be used for worldly consumption; rather the ethics of Calvinism was to live frugally. This meant that investment became something like a holy creed. At the heart of capitalism is the concept of investment, which is about investing capital to make more goods, which create more profit, which in turn creates more capital.
Thus Weber was able to argue that religion, in this case Calvinism, does have an influence on economic development. -