Worshiping Our Society

We can easily say that religion has a great influence on society, but can we say that society has a great influence on religion? In the essay “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life”, Emile Durkheim explores the relationship between religion and society. Durkheim introduces us to the totemic principle, in which he explains how things become sacred with in a community and have a symbolic meaning based on a communal belief. For example, Durkheim uses the example of the Crow phratry being crows. Durkheim states,

[The native] does not exactly mean that they are crows, in the everyday empirical sense of the world, but that the same principle is found in all of them. That principle constitutes what they all most fundamentally are, is shared between people and animals of the same name, and is conceptualized as having the outward form of a crow.

Within the Crow phratry the crow has become a sign of the group. As Durkheim explains, this is one of the common threads among religious groups. If we are to look at other religious assemblies we can see that they also have physical objects that are representative of their group. For example, the fish is commonly recognized as a symbol of Christianity and the Torah for the Jewish community. Both the fish and the Torah are religious totems because they reflect the individual societies they symbolize. Based on this observation Durkheim makes the assertion that religion is the worship of a society.

In response, I have to agree with Durkheim’s assertion. If religions use objects from their society as a representation of the religion than they must be honoring the values and ideas they collectively live by.

Durkheim, Emile. "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life." trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995).