Anthropological approaches to the study of religion (evolutionary, psychological and functional)

Anthropologists proposed various theories to explain the origin of religions.Broadly they can be classified into three types....
1.The Evolutionary Theories --E.B. Taylor and James Frazer are two of the earliest researchers who tried to develop theories of the nature of religion and its origin.Taylor defined religion as belief in supernatural beings and stated that this belief originated as explanations to the world. According to Taylor - animism was the earliest religious beliefs of primitive groups, next stage is polytheism, then monotheism .He explained this in theory of unilineal evolution of spirituality,he said it could be compared to material advancement of social groups.Frazer theorized that imitative magic and contagious magic precedes religion.
Also read :
Evolutionary origin of Religions

2.The Functional Theories --Emile Durkheim- believed that religion is central to the reproduction and maintenance of social order in societies.The necessity made the people to create the religion. He believes that the major function of religion is to socialise societies members .Durkheim held the view that the function of religion is group cohesion often performed by collectively attended rituals. He asserted that these group meeting provided a special kind of energy, which he called effervescence, that made group members lose their individuality and to feel united with the gods and thus with the group.Durkheim's approach gave rise to functionalist school in sociology and anthropology. Malinowski -saw religion, in particular rites of passage, as functioning to appease the stress caused by life crises such as death marriage, birth etc.-things that could cause social upheaval.Karl Marx states that an economically-deprived man is kept from revolting for equality by his beliefs in religion which passify him in hoping for a better life in the world to come. He said: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." The religion functions to fulfill the ambitions of the higher class of the society.

3.The Psychological Theories--theory that religion is the result of psychological mechanisms shared by all normal human minds. According to this theory there are similarities in the religious ideas of cultures that are widely separated from one another geographically or in time.These resemblances are explained by the fact that all human minds and brains function in much the same way.Another idea that has attracted a lot of attention in recent years arises from the concept of memes first introduced by Richard Dawkins ( A meme is a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena.). Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Sigmund Freud theorized that a deep subconscious psychological conflict within social groups was responsible for early development of religion and served to strengthen the group. He believed that religion is an attempt to grapple with various psychological complexes.

In addition to these,there are faith based theories:there are probably hundreds of different religious creation stories which describe how humans, other species of life, the Earth, and the rest of the universe came to be. Many of these stories describe the origins of their particular religion. It was typically based on revelation from one or more deities -- mainly gods and goddesses.