Revision summary
Durkheim: religion is society in sacred form, through ritual and the church as moral community. Civil religion, rallies, and festivals still fit. Weber, Marx, and gender critique limit the group-mirror model. Secularisation is unfinished; Census and NFHS show mixed practice. Use Durkheim for solidarity; do not use him as the whole of contemporary religion.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Emile Durkheim treated religion as society worshipping its own ideal in sacred symbols. The sacred–profane split, collective effervescence, and the church as a moral community remain usable. They do not exhaust politics, markets, or inner faith in the present.
Body
What still travels
- The Elementary Forms located the sacred in group assembly, not in a supernatural being as such. National days, stadiums, and disaster rituals still produce effervescence.
- Robert Bellah’s civil religion in the United States is a Durkheimian reading of flags and founding myths.
- Indian public festivals and, in another key, mass political rallies, organise belonging through sacred-like marking of space and time.
Critical limits
- Max Weber stressed meaning, theodicy, and this-worldly asceticism. Contemporary evangelical and reformist currents are poorly read as only the group hugging itself.
- Karl Marx treated religion as protest and as a veil of class. Durkheim underplayed domination inside the “church”.
- Bryan Wilson and later secularisation debates asked whether differentiation shrinks the sacred. Durkheim expected cults of the individual, not simple disappearance.
- Gendered priesthood and caste in temples show that the moral community is stratified. Ann Oakley-style questions about whose sacred order is at work are needed.
- Census religion tables and NFHS on practice show persistence, switching, and private belief that a clan totem model only partly fits.
Verdict
- Relevant as a theory of ritual solidarity and of the sacred as social.
- Incomplete as a theory of salvation, organisation, and religious conflict in a media-saturated world.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD D[Durkheim religion] --> S[Sacred profane] D --> E[Collective effervescence] D --> M[Moral community] S --> NOW[Rallies nations festivals] W[Weber Marx secularisation] --> LIM[Limits]
Conclusion
Durkheim remains relevant wherever groups make the sacred and bind themselves. Weber, Marx, and feminist and secularisation critiques show what his clan model misses: meaning, class, gender, and the unfinished death of the gods.
Quick related
Students also ask
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According to Mead the idea of self develops when the individual becomes self-conscious.Explain.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2022 · Q6(a)). View answer →
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Did Durkheim predict the end of religion?
He predicted new cults, including the cult of the individual, not a simple emptying of the sacred.
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Is a cricket crowd a church?
It can be effervescence. It lacks a lasting moral community and a full sacred system in his strict sense.
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