SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to Ancestor Worship.

This article focuses on the views of several social scientists on the scientific study of religion. For precisely a century, sociologists have been paying homage to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this, his most famous work, Max Weber proposed that capitalism originated only in Europe because, of all the world's religions, only Protestantism provided a moral vision that led people to restrain their material consumption while vigorously seeking wealth. Weber argued that prior to the reformation, restraint on consumption was invariably linked to asceticism and hence to condemnations of commerce. On the other hand, Emile Durkheim is greatly admired for his definition of religion and the thesis that religion functions to create social solidarity and thereby to sustain the moral order. Both these contributions are so badly flawed that they probably set the social scientific study of religion back by at least several generations. Meanwhile, the single most significant thing Karl Marx had to say about religion, a proposition that has been echoed through the generations by Marx's disciples, and that has gained such credibility in other areas that it cannot be rooted out of the textbooks or from popular expression. Marx gave poetic expression to the sociological axiom that faith is rooted in want and misery and that piety is most prevalent among the poor.