SOME OF THE MAJOR FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION The place of religion in the simple, preliterate societies is quite definite; as a complex it fits into the whole social organization and functions dominantly in every part of it. In societies like ours, however, its place is less clear and more complex. With the diversity of religious viewpoints, there are differences of opinion as to the essential features of religion; and there are different opinions as to the essential functions of religion. Nevertheless, for most of the population of heterogeneous advanced societies, though less for the less religious portion, religion does perform certain modal individual and social functions. Although the inner functions of religion are not of direct significance in social organization, they have important indirect consequences. If the inner functions of religion are performed, the individual is a composed, ordered, motivated, and emotionally secure associate; he is not greatly frustrated, and he is not anomic; he is better fitted to perform his social life among his fellows. There are several closely related inner functions. In the last analysis, religion is the means of inducing, formulating, expressing, enhancing, implementing, and perpetuating man's deepest experienceÑthe religious. Man is first religious; the instrumentalities follow. Religion seeks to satisfy human needs of great pertinence. The significant things in it, at the higher religious levels, are the inner emotional, mental, and spiritual occurrences that fill the pressing human needs of self-preservation, self-pacification, and self-completion. The chief experience is the sensing of communion, and in the higher religions, of a harmonious relationship with the supernatural power. Related to this is the fact that most of the higher religions define for the individual his place in the universe and give him a feeling that he is relatively secure in an ordered, dependable universe. Man has the experience of being helpfully allied with what he can not fully understand; he is a coordinate part of all of the mysterious energy and being and movement. The universe is a safe and permanent home. A number of religions also satisfy for many the need of being linked with the ultimate and eternal. Death is not permanent defeat and disappearance; man has a second chance. He is not lost in the abyss of endless time; he has endless being. Religion at its best also offers the experience of spiritual fulfillment by inviting man into the highest realm of the spirit. Religion can summate, epitomize, relate, and conserve all the highest ideals and valuesÑethical, aesthetic, and religiousÑof man formed in his culture. There is also the possibility, among higher religions, of experiencing consistent meaning in life and enjoying guidance and expansiveness. The kind of religious experience that most moderns seek not only provides, clarifies, and relates human yearnings, values, ideals, and purposes; it also provides facilities and incitements for the development of personality, sociality, and creativeness. Under the religious impulse, whether theistic or humanistic, men have joy in living; life leads somewhere. Religion at its best is out in front, ever beckoning and leading on, and, as Lippman put it, "mobilizing all man's scattered energies in one triumphant sense of his own infinite importance". At the same time that religion binds the individual helpfully to the supernatural and gives him cosmic peace and a sense of supreme fulfillment, it also has great therapeutic value for him. It gives him aid, comfort, even solace, in meeting mundane life situations where his own unassisted practical knowledge and skill are felt by him to be inadequate. He is confronted with the recurrent crises, such as great natural catastrophes and the great transitions of lifeÑmarriage, incurable disease, widowhood, old age, the certainty of death. He has to cope with frustration and other emotional disturbance and anomie. His religious beliefs provide him with plausible explanations for many conditions which cause him great concern, and his religious faith makes possible fortitude, equanimity, and consolation, enabling him to endure colossal misfortune, fear, frustration, uncertainty, suffering, evil, and danger. Religion usually also includes a principle of compensation, mainly in a promised perfect future state. The belief in immortality, where held, functions as a redress for the ills and disappointments of the here and now. The tensions accompanying a repressive consciousness of wrongdoing or sinning or some tormenting secret are relieved for the less self-contained or self-sufficient by confession, repentance, and penance. The feeling of individual inferiority, defeat, or humilation growing out of various social situations or individual deficiencies or failures is compensated for by communion in worship or prayer with a friendly, but all-victorious Father-God, as well as by sympathetic fellowship with others who share this faith, and by opportunities in religious acts for giving vent to emotions and energies. In providing for these inner individual functions, religion undertakes in behalf of individual peace of mind and well-being services for which there is no other institution. In addition to the functions of religion within man, there have always been the outer social functions for the community and society. The two have never been separable. Religion is vitally necessary in both societal maintenance and regulation. The value-system of a community or society is always correlated with, and to a degree dependent upon, a more or less shared system of religious beliefs and convictions. The religion supports, re-enforces, reaffirms, and maintains the fundamental values. Even in the United States, with its freedom of religious belief and worship and its vast denominational differentiation, there is a general consensus regarding the basic Christian values. This is demonstrated especially when there is awareness of radically different value orientation elsewhere; for example Americans rally to Christian values vis-a-vis those of atheistic communism. In America also all of our major religious bodies officially sanction a universalistic ethic which is reflective of our common religion. Even the non-church membersÑthe freewheelers, marginal religionists and so onÑhave the values of Christian civilization internalized in them. Furthermore, religion tends to integrate the whole range of values from the highest or ultimate values of God to the intermediary and subordinate values; for example, those regarding material objects and pragmatic ends. Finally, it gives sanctity, more than human legitimacy, and even, through super-empirical reference, transcendent and supernatural importance to some values; for example, marriage as a sacrament, much law-breaking as sinful, occasionally the state as a divine instrument. It places certain values at least beyond questioning and tampering. Closely related to this function is the fact that the religious system provides a body of ultimate ends for the society, which are compatible with the supreme eternal ends. This something leads to a conception of an over-all Social Plan with a meaning interpretable in terms of ultimate ends; for example, a plan that fulfills the will of God, which advances the Kingdom of God, which involves social life as part of the Grand Design. This explains some group ends and provides a justification of their primacy. It gives social guidance and direction and makes for programs of social action. Finally, it gives meaning to much social endeavor, and logic, consistency, and meaning to life. In general, there is no society so secularized as to be completely without religiously inspired transcendental ends. Religion integrates and unifies. Some of the oldest, most persistent, and most cohesive forms of social groupings have grown out of religion. These groups have varied widely from mere families, primitive, totemic groups, and small modern cults and sects, to the memberships of great denominations, and great, widely dispersed world religions. Religion fosters group life in various ways. The common ultimate values, ends and goals fostered by religion are a most important factor. Without a system of values there can be no society. Where such a value system prevails, it always unifies all who possess it; it enables members of the society to operate as a system. The beliefs of a religion also reflecting the values are expressed in creeds, dogmas, and doctrines, and form what Durkheim calls a credo. As he points out, a religious group can not exist without a collective credo, and the more extensive the credo, the more unified and strong is the group. The credo unifies and socializes men by attaching them completely to an identical body of doctrine; the more extensive and firm the body of doctrine, the firmer the group. The religious symbolism, and especially the closely related rites and worship forms, constitute a powerful bond for the members of the particular faith. The religion, in fact, is an expression of the unity of the group, small or large. The common codes, for religious action as such and in their ethical aspects for everyday moral behavior, bind the devotees together. These are ways of jointly participating in significantly symbolized, standardized, and ordered religiously sanctified behavior. The codes are mechanism for training in, and directing and enforcing, uniform social interaction, and for continually and publicly reasserting the solidarity of the group. Durkheim noted long ago that religion as "...a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things... unites into one single moral community... all those who adhere to them". His view is that every religion pertains to a community, and, conversely, every community is in one aspect a religious unit. This is brought out in the common religious ethos that prevails even in the denominationally diverse audiences at many secular semi-public and public occasions in the United States; and it is evidenced in the prayers offered, in the frequent religious allusions, and in the confirmation of points on religious grounds. The unifying effect of religion is also brought out in the fact that historically peoples have clung together as more or less cohesive cultural units, with religion as the dominant bond, even though spatially dispersed and not politically organized. The Jews for 2500 years have been a prime example, though the adherents of any world or interpeople religion are cases in point. It might be pointed out that the integrating function of religion, for good or ill, has often supported or been identified with other groupingsÑpolitical, nationality, language, class, racial, sociability, even economic. Religion usually exercises a stabilizing-conserving function. As such it acts as an anchor for the people. There is a marked tendency for religions, once firmly established, to resist change, not only in their own doctrines and policies and practices, but also in secular affairs having religious relevance. It has thus been a significant factor in the conservation of social values, though also in some measure, an obstacle to the creation or diffusion of new ones. It tends to support the longstanding precious sentiments, the traditional ways of thinking, and the customary ways of living. As Yinger has pointed out, the "...reliance on symbols, on tradition, on sacred writings, on the cultivation of emotional feelings of identity and harmony with sacred values, turns one to the past far more than to the future". Historically, religion has also functioned as a tremendous engine of vindication, enforcement, sanction, and perpetuation of various other institutions. At the same time that religion exercises a conserving influence, it also energizes and motivates both individuals and groups. Much of the important individual and social action has been owing to religious incentives. The great ultimate ends of religion have served as magnificent beacon lights that lured people toward them with an almost irresistible force, mobilizing energies and inducing sacrifices; for example, the Crusades, mission efforts, just wars. Much effort has been expended in the sincere effort to apply the teaching and admonitions of religion. The insuperable reward systems that most religions embody have great motivating effects. Religion provides the most attractive rewards, either in this world or the next, for those who not merely abide by its norms, but who engage in good works. Religion usually acts as a powerful aid in social control, enforcing what men should or should not do. Among primitive peoples the sanctions and dictates of religion were more binding than any of the other controls exercised by the group; and in modern societies such influence is still great. Religion has its own supernatural prescriptions that are at the same time codes of behavior for the here and now.