Weber’s sociology of religion explores how religion influences human ways of life, economic activity, and social order. The works known in Japanese as “The Sociology of Religion” include translations of part of “Economy and Society.” This summary centers on that systematic discussion while also touching on his comparative studies of the world religions.
What Weber asks is not whether God exists or which religion is correct. He asks how people act because they believe in religious meanings. Rituals that look irrational from the outside are, for those who perform them, meaningful acts for avoiding illness and disaster and protecting their lives. To understand religion, it is necessary to grasp the motives of believers themselves and to consider the consequences their actions bring to society.
Early religious and magical acts did not necessarily aim at salvation after death. They were closely tied to this-worldly benefits such as good harvests, health, long life, and victory in war. Magicians tried to manipulate spiritual forces through special abilities, and people sought to ward off misfortune through rituals and offerings. In time, the characters and roles of the gods were put in order, and religious ideas developed into more systematic images of the world. This, however, is not a simple theory of development in which all religions advance in the same sequence.
In the formation and transformation of religion, differences among those who carry it are important. Priests administer ritual and doctrine on the basis of continuing organizations and traditions. Prophets, by contrast, set forth new teachings and ways of life on the authority of a revelation or mission they have received. Weber distinguishes ethical prophecy, which demands obedience to God’s commands, from exemplary prophecy, which shows the way to salvation through the prophet’s own way of life. When a prophet’s personal authority is institutionalized by successors and religious communities, the teachings become an order of everyday life.
Believers are not uniform either. Peasants, warriors, bureaucrats, merchants, artisans, intellectuals, and others each have different living conditions and religious needs. For peasants, rituals tied to nature and the land can be meaningful; for warriors, ideas affirming honor and fate. For merchants and artisans, a calculable order and an ethic regulating everyday conduct may be congenial. But a particular stratum does not necessarily hold a particular faith. The carriers of a religion and its doctrines change while influencing each other.
When religion becomes systematized, the question arises: “Why do the good suffer and the wicked prosper?” If the world follows a just order, how are real misfortune and injustice to be explained? This is the problem of theodicy. Religions offer different answers, such as rewards in the afterlife, the idea of karma linking past deeds and rebirth, and the inscrutable decrees of God. These answers give meaning to suffering and at the same time direct how people live in this world.
The meaning of salvation also differs from religion to religion. The conduct required changes according to what one is to be saved from, whether calamity, sin, the cycle of rebirth, desire, or the meaninglessness of life. Participation in ritual, good works, faith, meditation, and ascetic practice become paths to salvation. To understand the social influence of religion, one must look not only at the names of doctrines but also at what believers actually do every day to attain salvation.
To compare such attitudes toward life, Weber distinguishes asceticism from mysticism. In asceticism, a person acts as God’s instrument, suppressing desires and practicing disciplined conduct. In mysticism, one seeks union with the divine through contemplation and inner experience rather than action. Further differences arise according to whether one withdraws from the world or remains within it. These are ideal types for sorting out actual religions; in reality, several features are mixed together.
Inner-worldly asceticism is a representative combination of these. Without withdrawing from society, one disciplines oneself within one’s occupation and family life. Weber argued that in ascetic Protestantism this attitude supported labor, thrift, credit, and continuous reinvestment. Religion did not, however, determine the economy unilaterally. What he examines is the historical process in which economic conditions and institutions became linked with religious motives.
In comparing the world religions, he takes up Confucianism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, ancient Judaism, and others. He found in Confucianism an adaptation to the order of this world; in the religions of India, a status order and salvation from the cycle of rebirth; and in ancient Judaism, an ethical prophecy linking God’s commands with history. The purpose of the comparison is not to rank religions but to clarify why different attitudes toward life took shape in each civilization.
The more thoroughly a religious ethic is carried through, the stronger its tension with actual society becomes. Universal brotherly love collides with the impersonal competition of the market and with the violence of the state and war. Art, eroticism, and scholarship also develop their own values and move away from the demands of religion. Rationalization does not simply mean science dispelling superstition; it also means that conflicts among different values become clear in the process of trying to systematize life.
What Weber’s sociology of religion shows is that religion is not merely an escape from reality but has the power to organize human action and change society. At the same time, actions based on faith produce results that believers did not intend. The core of this research is to elucidate the relationship between the meanings people give to the world and the institutions their actions create. (Continued in Part 2 on the social influence of each religion as analyzed by Weber →)
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