ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that there is a tendency in ethnological theory, though not in ethnographic practice, to slight the very real human beings who participate in religious events or who contribute in various ways to the understanding and practice of what religion is in their communities. It would appear, in fact, that for many in many societies, religion implies and even promotes as much conflict as it does community. Except in the most isolated and homogeneous societies, for example, there are usually people who–specifically because they are nonbelievers–are excluded from membership in the communities in which they live out their lives. The notion of community, after all, as Emiie Durkheim has used it, reflects a supposition that the members of the group see themselves as one. Religion not only upholds the social structure, but–again, as Durkheim observed–it is the social structure, and that means it is both community and conflict.
