Once human beings realize that the values projected on to religion are really their own, those values become capable of realization on this earth, rather than being deferred to an afterlife. The powers believed to be possessed by God in Christianity can be appropriated by human beings themselves are imperfect and flawed.  However, the potential for love and goodness and the power to control our own lives, Feuerbach believed, are present in human social institution and can be brought to fruition once we understand their true nature. Marx accepted the view that religion represents human self-alienation. It is often believed that Marx was dismissive of religion, but this is far from true. Religion, he writes, is the ‘heart of heartless world’ – a heaven from the harshness of daily reality. In Marx’s view, religion in its traditional form will, and should, disappear yet this is because the positive values embodied in religion can become guiding ideals for improving the lot of humanity on this earth, not because these ideals and values themselves are mistaken. We should not fear the gods we ourselves have created, and we should cease endowing them with values we ourselves can realize. Marx declared, in famous phrase, that religion has been the ‘opium of the people’. Religion defers happiness rewards to the afterlife, teaching the resigned acceptance of existing conditions in this life. Attention is thus diverted away from inequalities and injustices in this world by the promise of what is to come in the next. Religion has a strong ideological element: religion beliefs and values often provide justifications on inequalities of wealth and power. For example, the teaching that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’ suggests attitudes of humility and non-resistance to oppression.

Durkheim and Religious Ritual

In contrast to Marx, Durkheim spent a good part his intellectual career studying religion, concentrating particularly on religion in small-scale, traditional societies. Durkheim’s work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, first published in 1912, is perhaps the single most influential study in the sociology of religion (Durkheim 12976). Durkheim does not connect religion primarily with social inequalities or power, but relates it to the overall nature of the institutions of the society. He bases his work on a study of totemism as practiced by Australian Aboriginal societies, and he argues that totemism represents religion in its most ‘elementary’ or simple from- hence the title of this book. As totem, has been mentioned was originally an animal or plant taken as having particular symbolic significance for a group. It is a sacred object, regarded with veneration and surrounded by various ritual activities. Durkheim defines religion in terms of a distinction between the sacred and the profane. Sacred objects and symbols, he holds, are treated as apart from the routine aspects of existence, which are the realm of profane. Eating the totemic animal or plant, except on special ceremonial occasions is usually forbidden, and as a sacred object the totem is believed to have divine properties which separate it completely from other animals that might be hunted, or crops gathered and consumed. Why is totem sacred? According to Durkheim, it is because it is the symbol of the group or community. The reverence which people feel for the totem actually derives from the respect they hold for central social values. In religion, the object of worship is society itself. All religions involved regular ceremonial and ritual activities, in which a group of believers meets together. In collective ceremonials, a sense of group solidarity is affirmed and heightened; Ceremonials take individuals away from the concerns of profane social life into an elevated sphere, in which they feel in contact with higher forces. These higher forces, attributed to totems, divine influences or gods, are really the expression of the influence of the collectivity over the individual. Ceremony and ritual, in Durkheim’s view, are essential to binding the members of groups together. This is why they are found not only in regular situations of worship, but in the various life crises when major social transitions are experienced, for example birth, marriage and death. In virtually all societies, ritual and ceremonial procedures are observed on such occasions. Durkheim reasons that collective ceremonials reaffirm group solidarity at a time when people  are forced to adjust to major changes in their lives. Funeral rituals demonstrate that the values of the group outlive the passing of particular individuals, and so provide a means for bereaved people to adjust to their altered circumstances. Mourning is not the spontaneous expression of grief – or, at least, it is only for those personally affected by the death. Mourning is a duty imposed by the groups. In small traditional cultures, Durkheim argued, almost all aspects of life are permitted by religion. Religious ceremonials both originate new ideas and categories of thought, and reaffirm existing values. Religion is not just a series of sentiments and activities; it actually conditions the modes of thinking of individuals in traditional cultures. Even the most basic categories of thought, including how time and space are thought of, were first framed in religious terms. The concept of ‘time’, for instance, was originally derived from counting the intervals involved in religious ceremonials. With the development of modern societies, Durkheim believed, the influence of religion wanes. Scientific thinking increasingly replaces religious explanation, and ceremonial and ritual activities come to occupy only a small part of individuals’ lives. Durkheim argues agrees with Marx that traditional religion – that is, religion involving divine forces or gods – is on the verge of disappearing. ‘The old gods are dead,’ Durkheim writes. Yet he says that there is a sense in which religion, in altered forms, is likely to continue. Even modern societies depend for their cohesion on rituals that reaffirm their values; new ceremonial activities can thus be expected to emerge to replace the old. Durkheim is vague about what these might be, but it seems that he has in mind the celebration of humanist and political values such as freedom, equality and social cooperation.