ABSTRACT
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann was a coherent systemic functionalist who wrote about religion. Luhmann's essay on the function of religion was not born out of a unified project, nor was it part of an intellectual plan especially dedicated to the study of religious phenomena. The five chapters of Luhmann's volume dealt with different questions: the social function of religion, religious dogma and social evolution, contingency transformations in the social systems of religion, secularization, and organization. His main point is that religion, as a social system, regulates the relationships of people with the world in a comprehensive and ultimate meaning. Religion surrendered to other subsystems some of its peculiar characteristics; however, it succeeded in surviving thanks to its adaptation to modernity. Religion in fact postulated the idea of God as a contingency formula that was helpful in order to make the transition from indeterminable to determinate and therefore it reduced complexity.
