ABSTRACT
German sociologist Georg Simmel differentiates religiosity from religion in the following way: He defines religiosity as the inner form of human experience, which thus precedes religion. Religion then is nothing but the empirical transposition of religiosity, a realization at the organizational level through the various modalities of church, sect, denomination, and movement. In Simmel's social-religious approach, the parallelism between religiosity and sociability is fairly clear. In his Philosophy of Money Simmel wrote: If we define culture as the refinement, as the intellectualized forms of life, the accomplishment of mental and practical labor, then we place these values in a context to which they do not automatically belong by virtue of their own objective significance. As for religion Simmel envisages the same perspective. At first religion is merely nature, then it becomes more spiritual until it completely develops into culture. The religious character of social conditions has very often been one characteristic stage of their development.
