Sociology and Theology: A Career in Misunderstanding

Abstract

Since Comte, sociology has had an uneasy relationship with Christianity. In the nineteenth century, sociology was conceived as a replacement for Christianity, providing a basis for scientific enlightenment, freeing the masses from the illusory grip of religious belief, and applying reason to the strengthening of social bonds and the preservation of morals. For Comte, positivism represented the ultimate outcome of the progress of reason and with sociology he established a new religion of humanity. To Marx, religious belief was based on an illusion. It was an ideological instrument that disguised the interests of capitalists and veiled their ownership of the means of production. Following Comte, Durkheim saw religious rituals as sustaining social bonds and functioning to mirror a collectivity greater than the individual Simmel, who was Jewish, had a sympathetic, if agnostic attitude to religion, while Weber confessed himself to be tone deaf to the resonances it produced. Sociology was formed outside theology and has had a long career of indifference, if not antagonism, to its truth claims. It is scarcely surprising that the response of Catholicism to the scientific imperialism of cruder forms of positivist sociology was equally hostile.