Durkheim believes that:

    1) The worship of God is really just the worship of society and society's own values.  For him, society and the sacred are much the same thing.  Societies demand our individual allegiance, and they reinforce our allegiance by projecting their own values into the heavens -- for Durkheim, the qualities, attributes and values of God (or the Gods) are really just those of our own society.

    2)  The collective act of worship integrates social institutions: it is the glue that holds societies together.  It does this through "collective effervescence," a dynamic social force that people mistake for the sacred.  Collective effervescence is the life of a group over and above the lives of the individuals who make up a group.  The basic principle here is one you've probably heard before -- that the whole is greater than the simple sums of its parts.  Again, for Durkheim, collective effervescence = the sacred.

Durkheim is a "social Darwinian," that is, he believes there has been a qualitative evolution of human societies from "primitive society" to "modern society."

Modern society" is "organic."  Like the body it has highly specialized "organs" -- the military, educational institutions, entertainment institutions, governing and productive institutions, etc.

In "primitive societies" religion is strong because all people in the small tribal group share the same values (and religion, remember, is the worship of your group's own values).

In "modern societies," however, Durkheim believes that people no longer share many of the same values, and religion weakens (and he believed it would ultimately die) and is replaced by what he called "the cult of the individual," that is, notions of the high value and importance of individuality.  Modern societies maximize choice, and as we move in unique ways among its many complex organs and their cultural product, we shape ourselves as unique individuals.