Religion has affected humans in society in many different ways, by rules, traditions and mortality. The most powerful and important role that religion has played within society is how it controlled the human mind for many centuries, brainwashing the people on what to believe and what not to believe, and that is one of the main reasons why religious organisations are changing the rules and trying to adapt to society to win the faith of the people back, as things like New Age Movements and Atheism, by no doubt are becoming much more popular than religion.
Durkheim argues that the popularity of religion in Britain and the USA in late 18th early 19th century was a reaction to anxieties created by industrialisation and urbanisation. This created social disruption, undermined value consensus and produced anomie, which is the feelings of moral confusion and uncertainty of the future. Such feelings led to the appearance of religious sects such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s witnesses. In a situation of change and uncertainty, people were most likely to lose their faith in religion, which may have led to secularisation, which comes back to the theory that religious organisations are now adapting to society in order for them not to die out.
Sociologists such as Durkheim, are interested in the relationship between religion and social change. Some approaches see religion as change inhibiting a conservative force in society, whilst others see religion as promoting social change. Durkheim believed that religion is a secondary agent of socialisation whose major function is to socialise society’s members into value consensus, which is a common agreement about values and the ways of behaving. We can assume that this may also be a reason on why religion is actually adapting to society, to tell people how to behave and what common values are acceptable, an example of this is that