ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the continuing presence of two recurring and apparently antipathetic terms, ontologies, means of understanding, in the history of religions: the individual and the social. In sociology and anthropology this is mainly a result of the influence of three extraordinarily influential theorists: Karl Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber. Social structural approaches, such as that delineated by Marx, ignore such accounts, even though they date back at least to Augustine's Confessions. Marx had little to say about religion, but what he did say has had major social and theoretical repercussions. Clearly, individuals respond in various ways to the march of modernity, but the faith and practice of individuals remain of little interest to Durkheim and his followers. Mention of decline brings, appropriately, to secularization' and Max Weber. Islam is sometimes described not as a religion' but as a way of life' a claim which neatly obviates the religion/secularity dichotomy.
