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Durkheim's most beautiful book appeared in 1912, The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse.
It is presented as a study about the most
distinct origins of religion beliefs in practices.
Durkheim used anthropological or ethnographic material.
He was, for example,
very interested in field studies about a tribe in Australian aboriginals
whose religion was supposed to be one of the oldest types to be found on the Earth.
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Let me begin with Durkheim's methodological principle that
the sociologist should always take the words
of the people he studies very seriously.
Even if they tell you about an experience that seems to be very irrational or
even crazy at first sight, do not doubt their honesty.
The experience that they tell you about is a deep reality for them.
So, if you notice for example, that somebody treats seemingly
very ordinary object with strange kind of awe and
reverence, try to understand what is going on there.
Don't mock the Aboriginal who seems to be strangely impressed
by what appears to be an ordinary stone on the ground.
Don't react with a smile when a Catholic prays to a small wooden statue.
Don't criticize a patriotic citizen who experiences genuine
pain when he sees that his flag is burned.
Try to understand them.
Try to imagine what their world must be like for them.
And then the first thing you may notice is that the stone, the statue,
the flag, are, in their eyes, no ordinary everyday object.
They are different.
They are set apart.
They are charged with a special energy.
Durkheim says that for those people there is a clear distinction
between the profane and the sacred, between the mundane, everyday world and
the religious world, between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
If you ask religious person what it is that she or
he experiences when they participate in a religious ritual, or
when they are confronted with an object that they believe to be sacred,
then they of course have to search for words first.
But then, they will eventually come up with an answer that they can feel a kind
of power, something that at the same time frightens them and also comforts them.
It can be frightening at times because it's a power that forces them to
do certain things and to refrain from other things.
And if you do not obey you may be punished.
So it's a coercive force, but it's also a source of strength
because in times of grief and distress it will support you and comfort you.
You can rely on it.
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For example, when you mourn the loss of a loved one,
it will catch you when you have a sense of falling.
Durkheim says that somebody who has participated in a religious gathering will
often say that she or he feels strengthened, energized and
bold, empowered, and again, that's not something that they imagine he says.
It's something real.
Maybe it's a feeling that Durkheim himself remembered from the time
when he still went to the synagogue.
This power is so overwhelming that the believers are convinced
that it already existed before they were born and
that it will exist long after they have passed away.
It is something that is not inside them, it is external to them.
It is superior to everybody.
It envelops and unites their whole religious community.
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Now Durkheim is convinced that the believers tell the researcher honestly
about what they feel, that he interprets those facts in a different way.
A way that's far removed from the interpretations
of the believers themselves.
This coercive and external power, he says,
can be nothing else than the power of society.
It is society, it is our own social network that supports and
comforts us in times of trouble and grief.
It is society that gives that special feeling of strength and energy.
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It is society, it is the conscious collective that existed long before
your were born and that will continue to exist long after you have passed away.
It is society that is external to us,
that overarches our lives and at the same time, binds us together.
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Religious imagery is seen here as a kind of proto-sociology, a metaphorical
way to speak about something that is very difficult to imagine and
to comprehend at a time when the science of sociology did not yet exist.
The idea that from the moment of our birth on,
we are inextricably woven into the tissues of society.
Bart van HeerikhuizenDr.
