Theories of religion - Durkheim

Key ideas

• Social exsistence is only possible through the belief in shared ideas
• Functionalist definition of religion - 'beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church'
• Religion is therefore an essential part of the 'collective consicence' or the shared ideas that make social life possible
• This collective consicence constituted the fundamental notions of time, space, causation and relationships that allow humankind to think logically
• he distinguished between the profane and the sacred. The profane being everday life and the sacred being constituting things set apart and forbidden
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