Rearranging Durkheim: An anthropologically ethical take on a classic theory of religion

Many theories of religion tend toward a naturalistic, sociological, Durkheimian framework. While these theories have pointed out important dimensions of religious experience, they risk reducing the human experience of religion to a purely social or psychological phenomenon, without taking seriously the claims of religious adherents themselves. How can we begin to work toward a unique theory of religion, which incorporates both the social causes of religion (per Durkheim) while allowing for a much more sensitive and ethical hermeneutic of religious experience? This paper expands and revises Durkheim’s theory of religion toward a more malleable approach to the ethnographic study of religious communities and the subjective experiences of individuals within them. My theory is motivated by an attempt to use Durkheim’s theory in the discipline of anthropology to inform the ways in which anthropologists go about fieldwork and ethnographic writing when it pertains to the study of religion.