04/20/2022 – Daniel Pals' Nine Theories of Religion
What does the social scientific study of religion mean? Like, how many ways can one study religion? Today, we’re going to talk about a scholar who says the answer is at least nine. “Fascinating” [Spock, Star Trek]. Yeah. This is TenOnReligion.
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Daniel Pals is a professor at the University of Miami and originally wrote a book titled Seven Theories of Religion back in 1996. The theories were social scientific theories of religion which was a new way of interpreting religion way back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The seven theories in the book were well-known to academic religion scholars but not as well-known to non-specialists. One of the main purposes of the book was to introduce these theories to a more general audience. The book started out with two famous figures in the early study of religion: E. B. Tylor and James George Frazer. The other six theories were Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Mircea Eliade, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Clifford Geertz. The book was updated in 2006 as Eight Theories of Religion with the addition of Max Weber. The book was updated again to a third edition in 2015 as Nine Theories of Religion with the addition of William James. Ten Theories of Religion came out in 2021 with the addition of Mary Daly, but as of the creation of this video, not many libraries have acquired it so it’s hard to access. Because of that, I’m going to stick with the version that covers nine theories. Let’s briefly introduce these theories, and if you want to learn more, check out the book for yourself and see what you think.
Edward Burnett Tylor was from England in the 1800’s and concluded that the theory of animism was the key to understanding religion. The slightly younger James George Frazer, from Scotland, was a disciple of Tylor and is associated with a magic theory of religion. The two views are related and are often portrayed as an earlier and later view of a similar theory. Tylor’s main work was Primitive Culture published 12 years after Darwin’s Origin of Species. The aim was a science of culture and seeing how one can religiously interpret what aspects of culture survive and why. His view was that the origin of religion is rooted in animism – the idea that spirits animate different aspects of the natural world. Frazer’s main work was The Golden Bough, a monumental work composed over some 25 years. For Frazer, magic was a way for humans to connect, for better or worse, with animating spirits in nature. Although contemporary scholars have serious critiques of Tylor and Frazer, both are considered two of the important founding figures in the social scientific study of religion.
Sigmund Freud was a pioneer in modern psychology from Vienna, Austria. Not all of his writings are about religion, but those that are associate religion and its relationship with the human personality. Though he is perhaps most known for his writings about human sexuality, his psychological theories on religion talk about the ideas of taboo – actions which evolved into prohibitions – and the totem sacrifice. Using psychoanalysis, Freud later explains religion as arising from emotions rooted in the unconscious. One of the main issues with Freud’s theory is that it is so focused on Judaism and Christianity and one has a hard time making it fit as an explanation for any other religious tradition. Yet, the focus on the psychological function of religion is something that still has importance for many scholars today.
Émile Durkheim, from France, put society as the key to understanding religion. His main work is The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. When one studies groups of people, the idea of how morals function as religious standards for the entire group will emerge. Societies then view the world as two separate spheres of the sacred and the profane. Sacred things are set apart as superior and powerful and thus deserving of great respect. Profane things belong to the ordinary routine aspects of life. This isn’t a separation of good and evil though. Both can be good or evil, but they just can’t be each other. The sacred and profane are always separated. For Durkheim, it’s important to understand the function of religious beliefs in terms of what they do socially for a group.
Though Karl Marx appears as the fourth chapter in Nine Theories of Religion, he chronologically would be the first figure with his most famous publication, Das Kapital, appearing in 1867. His views on religion flow out of his ideas of class struggle, materialism, and his understanding of the exploitation of labor as directly related to capitalism and surplus value. Thus, religion has nothing but a negative purpose of keeping things the way those in power want them. It intentionally keeps people in a world of unreality, or illusion, to shield people from seeing what is really going on behind the curtain and basically appeasing them to make them more or less content with their place in society. There may be a lot of truth to this position, but some have critiqued it as being a bit too reductive to explain religion as solely a byproduct of economic factors.
Max Weber, along with Freud and Durkheim, emphasize the functional nature of religion – what human conditions or needs is religion fulfilling? His main work was The Sociology of Religion. He pioneered the usage of ideal-types as conceptual frameworks which can be formed as an analytical tool for social comparison to explain actions across history, such as social authority or the historical process of disenchantment. Through such analysis one can shed light on the relationship between religious leaders and social classes to connect them with beliefs and behaviors. From this, one can also connect other realms of culture such as social and political factors to further explain religion.
William James of Harvard University who died in 1910 became known as the father of modern psychology. His two books, The Will to Believe and The Varieties of Religious Experience are two of the defining books on religious pragmatism. James interpreted religion psychologically in a much more positive way than Freud did. He helped pioneer and adopt a philosophically pragmatic way of explaining religion in that if something works and benefits us, we tend to adopt it. Even though he was criticized for his dubious use of evidence and his somewhat loose definition of religion, his popularity in many circles is still quite high today.
The Romanian-born Mircea Eliade was a comparativist and historian of religion who taught in the United States at the University of Chicago for many years. He firmly held that religion should be understood on its own and not as dependent on some other aspect of life such as social, psychological, political or economic. Religion should be studied phenomenologically, a word from ancient Greek meaning “as it appears.” From this we can comparatively study the history of religion as a natural, even central, component of human life. He expanded on Durkheim’s concepts of the sacred and the profane as they relate to religious symbol, myth, and time. Eliade shifted the social scientific study of religion to a more globalized, historical framework. Many scholars applauded this move while others disliked his lack of a theological norm.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard was a field anthropologist. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, he lived with two African tribal societies for a significant length of time, learning their language and customs. His writings brought to the general public the largely misunderstood concept of witchcraft, a substance some people have in their bodies which operates in a mystical fashion to bring misfortune and sickness. Based on his real-world research, Evans-Pritchard wrote on a lot of other topics such as spirits, symbolism, sin and sacrifice and explained how these related to create entire societies based on their effects. Such theories were localized however, and it’s hard to make larger generalizations about religion based on his work. Yet, he insisted in a true science of religion, not in libraries, but in significant long-term living among the lives of ordinary people, which challenged many other theories of religion during his era.
Clifford Geertz was an American cultural anthropologist from the late 20th century doing field work in Indonesia and Morocco before becoming a professor at Princeton University. His most famous book was The Interpretation of Cultures published in 1973 where he emphasized the importance of a “thick” description of culture where meanings are directly related to intentions and significance of actions. Geertz developed a multi-faceted definition of a cultural system which he then applied to religion. Beliefs about the world support moral values and their undergirding emotions which serve as a guide to both individual and societal life. Geertz became a well-known proponent for rejecting general theories and held firm to the idea that all knowledge is local knowledge.
In these nine theories we have anthropology, sociology, psychology, phenomenology, and social/political philosophy. Each theory has its particular strengths and weaknesses which are highlighted by Daniel Pals in the book. In this video I just scratched the surface in introducing each of the figures and theories, and Pals likewise scratched the surface from a fuller understanding of each figure also, so again, if these theories sound interesting, check out Pals’ book, and if one or more of these social scientific approaches to religion pique your interest, dig a little deeper and see what you can learn.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you think was the most interesting theory and why. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.