ABSTRACT
Niklas Luhmann (1927-98) was a German sociologist who spent thirty years at the University of Bielefeld developing a general theory of society, a complex and highly abstract edice worked out in more than 500 publications over the course of his career. His theory of religion derives from that overall effort, focusing on the analysis of religion as a particular sort of social construction. In spite of signicant developments in his theory over the years, the most consistent question that informed all his works was how religion comes to be differentiated within society as a distinct social formation, ultimately as a differentiated societal system, and with what consequences. This was fundamentally an evolutionary question for him, but not in a teleological sense: the differentiation of religion in societies has occurred historically, but it is not a necessary development springing from some sui generis nature of religion, let alone from some a priori nature of ‘ultimate reality.’ Each of Luhmann’s major publications on religion – and most of the minor ones – reect this orientation. In the earliest, Function of religion (Luhmann 1977: 26-7),1 he locates the purpose of religion, its function, in familiar territory:2 religion grounds the ultimate indeterminability of all meaning; it absorbs the risk of failure inherent in all social representations and determinations. He maintains this understanding into his last major work, the posthumously published The religion of society (Luhmann 2000b: 127). This function by itself, however, does not already require the development of differentiated religion. Differentiation is a contingent possibility which historically has taken certain forms, with consequences that vary with the historical development of the societies in which this differentiated religion can be observed to occur. The task for theory then becomes to observe the changing forms and the changing consequences.3
