Emile Durkheim and a Popular Reading from Religion

Emile Durkheim’s attitude toward religion is thoroughly popular. It may be explained and studied under two subjects; one is his theory about the origin of religion and the other, the distinction that he has made between sacred and non-sacred affairs. Proposing the theory of “social origin of religion”, he has known religion as the evolution of totemist tradition and a production of human. In this way, he has implicitly rejected any form of supernatural and divine sources of religion. Also, by setting boundaries between the sacred and non-sacred affairs and constraining religion to the domain of sacred affairs, he has narrowed the field of religion and has driven it to the marginal and unserious sections. Entering these two entries of Durkheim’s thought, this paper embarks on analyzing and criticizing his thought in this filed. The research method for referring to the views is documentary and for illustrating the content critico-analytical.