User:Andries/Theories of religion

Scope and classifications

This article only treats theories that are open for empirical empirical verification or falsifications which means that most religious views will not be treated here.

Theories can be classified in several means

• Reductionist
• Functionalist

Tylor and Frazer animism and magic

(Pals)

E. B. Tylor (1832 – 1917), and James George Frazer (1854 – 1941) defined religion as belief in supernatural beings and stated that this belief originated as explanations to the world. Their theory has been criticized for neglecting the social aspects of religion.

Marx and the opiate of the masses

(Pals and Kunin)

Karl Marx held a strictly materialist world view and saw religion originating from alienation and supportive as the status quo, in corrosponce with his famous saying that religion is opium of the people.

Durkheim and functionalism

Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) Émile_Durkheim#Religion (Pals and Kunin)

Weber

(Kunin)

Freud and psychoanalysis

• Psychology_of_religion#Sigmund_Freud
  • Future of an Illusion, Totem and Taboo

(pals and Kunin)

Otto and the idea of the holy

• Psychology_of_religion#Rudolf_Otto

Eliade and the sacred

(Pals)

Evans-Pritchard Society's construct of the heart

(Pals)

Geertz religion as cultural system

(Pals)

Stark and Bainbridge theory

Rodney Stark & W. S. Bainbridge's in their book "Theory of Religion" and subsequent works present four models: the Psychopathological Model, the Entrepreneurial Model, the Social Model and the Normal Revelations model.

• Psychopathological model: religions are founded during a period of severe stress in the life of the founder. The founder suffers from psychological problems, which they resolve through the founding of the religion. (The development of the religion is for them a form of self-therapy, or self-medication.)
• Entrepreneurial model: founders of religions act like entrepreneurs, developing new products (religions) to sell to consumers (to convert people to). According to this model, most founders of new religions already have experience in several religious groups before they begin their own. They take ideas from the pre-existing religions, and try to improve on them to make them more popular.
• Social model: religions are founded by means of social implosions. Members of the religious group spend less and less time with people outside the group, and more and more time with each other within it. The level of affection and emotional bonding between members of a group increases, and their emotional bonds to members outside the group diminish. According to the social model, when a social implosion occurs, the group will naturally develop a new theology and rituals to accompany it.
• Normal revelations: religions are founded when the founder interprets ordinary natural phenomena as supernatural; for instance, ascribing his or her own creativity in inventing the religion to that of the deity.

See also

• Development of religion
• Origins of religion
• Sociology of religion

References

• Kunin, Seth D. "Religion; the modern theories" University of Edinburgh
• Pals, Daniel L. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508725-9

External links

• book review of Seven Theories of Religion
• http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Theory.htm