A Note on the Origins of Religious Differences

A T least three different models could be used to describe the relationship between religion as a sub-cultural system1 and society. In the Weberian model religion influences the personality variables of its members and the members in their turn, acting under the influence of their religious values, influence the organization of the social system.2 A second model, which might trace its origin to the positivist followers of Marx or the functionalist disciples of Durkheim, would view the influence flowing in the opposite direction: the social system would create certain in the personalities of its participants, which need dispositions would in their turn lead to certain kinds of religious activity and belief. In the first model religion is the independent variable, in the second it becomes an epiphenomenon-a dependent variable. A third model would view religion as neither necessarily an independent variable nor necessarily a dependent variable; rather it would see religion as a correlate, as a predictor variable which is perhaps independent and perhaps dependent; but whose precise causal influence must be determined in each correlation and not as a matter of general