This study will examine the concept and the importance of religion in the perspectives of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and Max Weber. The study will consider how each theorist views the relationship between religion and social stability, on the one hand, and religion and social change on the other, how each theorist sees the relationship between religion and modernization, and the strengths and weaknesses of each theorist's views, and will argue that Marx's views are most convincing.
Marx deals with the alienation which society produces in the individual, and argues that religion, which aims at healing this alienation, in fact masks its economic causes. The other theorists will be shown to take too lukewarm a view of the ills of society and the role religion plays in society, although aspects of each theorist's views are useful to an understanding of religion and society.
This is not to say that Marx is correct in his estimation of religion, for, in fact, this reader disagrees with his general dismissal of religion as a way to discover the reality of human existence. However, in the specific context of the study, Marx's theory presents the strongest portrait of the ills of society and the role which institutional religion plays in those ills.
Marx sees all social relations as a product of economic factors, and thus he believes religion to be a distraction from that economic essence. Weber believes in the important and distinct role religion played in the origin and development of capitalism, and he sees religion in all cases as playing a separate and important sociological function. Durkheim seems to take the most straightforward view toward religion, arguing that there is not yet enough scientific research into what religion is and does in the sociological context, but concluding nevertheless that religion through history has lost the social power it once had. Finally, Freud is most aligned with Marx in that...