Religion: Evolution and Development

Abstract

Since the idea of religious development merges into the much larger field of the history of religions, this article focuses on religious evolution. Contrary to common belief, it is to the writings of Max Weber that a defensible conception of religious evolution owes the most. According to Weber, Protestantism, though occurring in only one tradition, was, indirectly but crucially, an indispensable precondition for the emergence of modernity cross-culturally, and thus can legitimately be considered an instance of religious evolution. In this comparative studies in the sociology of religion Weber was particularly interested in the emergence of what he called the world religions in the first millennium BC. By calling these new symbolic forms ‘rationalized’ Weber was pointing to the fact that they were more coherent, more cognitively and ethically universalizing, more potentially self-critical (reflexive), and more disengaged from the existing society than what preceded them. Just as Protestantism emerged out of one of the world religions, so they themselves emerged out of societies organized in terms of kinship and neighborhood in which religion was primarily magical, by which Weber meant, one in which ritual means were used to attain utilitarian ends. This three-stage typology remains fundamental although it can be significantly refined.