If we were to look for an updated Durkheimian view today, we’d probably be less concerned with cathedrals than with concert halls, Instagram stories, and the quiet hum of a Sunday brunch line. For Durkheim, the function of religion was never about theology—it was about solidarity. The sacred wasn’t just God; it was the shared intensity of collective life, made visible through ritual. And in our allegedly post-religious, hyper-digital era, that need hasn't gone anywhere. We've just moved it.
Durkheim, Ritual, and the Sacred
Durkheim argued in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life that religion is society worshipping itself. Sacred symbols, he wrote, are really stand-ins for the collective. Rituals are how we reinforce the moral glue of a community—the collective effervescence that lifts us out of ourselves and binds us to a larger whole. Think less about robes and incense, more about rhythm and resonance.
With the erosion of traditional religious authority in many Western societies, we see not the disappearance of ritual, but its migration. Enter the mimosa. Or the music festival. Or the fandom meetup. These are not frivolous pastimes; they are modern rituals of belonging. That bottomless brunch? It's not just eggs and overpriced prosecco. It's a temporal anchor, a social check-in, a shared performance of stability in a world that feels increasingly unmoored.
We laugh at it, but that's the point. Irony is the only way many of us can admit we still need ritual. We show up in our best casuals, clink glasses, and post the group selfie—not just to flex, but to affirm: I was here. I was with others. I mattered.
The New Sacred: From Concerts to Content
Look at the ecstatic fervor of Swifties on tour, or the hushed awe in a dark theater before the film starts. These are spaces thick with modern sacrality. The rituals may be secular, but the structure is the same: separation from the everyday, a heightened shared experience, a return to the ordinary tinged with meaning.
Even online spaces, fractured as they are, replicate ritual logic. Hashtags become rallying cries. Memes circulate like icons. Livestreams generate a real-time, synchronous collective presence. Durkheim might not have liked TikTok, but he would’ve recognized its function.
The Moral Weight of the Mundane
The danger today isn't that we've lost religion. It's that we've lost awareness of the social functions that religion used to perform. Without consciously constructed rituals, we risk drifting into isolation, spectacle, or algorithmic tribalism. Durkheim reminds us that society doesn’t just happen; it must be continually made.
So maybe it’s time we stop mocking our little rituals and start investing in them. Not cynically, but consciously. Go to the drag brunch. Light the birthday candles. Host the watch party. These are not distractions from "real" community; they are community.
We may no longer believe in God the way our ancestors did, but we still believe in each other—or at least, we want to. And that's enough to make something sacred. Even if it's just pancakes and group pics on a Sunday afternoon.
