The place of religion in the simple, preliterate societies is quite definite; as a complex it fits into the whole social organization and functions dominantly in every part of it. In societies like ours, however, its place is less clear and more complex. With the diversity of religious viewpoints, there are differences of opinion as to the essential features of religion; and there are different opinions as to the essential functions of religion. Nevertheless, for most of the population of heterogeneous advanced societies, though less for the less religious portion, religion does perform certain modal individual and social functions.

Although the inner functions of religion are not of direct significance in social organization, they have important indirect consequences. If the inner functions of religion are performed, the individual is a composed, ordered, motivated, and emotionally secure associate; he is not greatly frustrated, and he is not anomic; he is better fitted to perform his social life among his fellows. There are several closely related inner functions.

In the last analysis, religion is the means of inducing, formulating, expressing, enhancing, implementing, and perpetuating man's deepest experience -- the religious. Man is first religious; the instrumentalities follow. Religion seeks to satisfy human needs of great pertinence. The significant things in it, at the higher religious levels, are the inner emotional, mental, and spiritual occurrences that fill the pressing human needs of self-preservation, self pacification, and self completion. The chief experience is the sensing of communion, and in the higher religions, of a harmonious relationship with the supernatural power. Related to this is the fact that most of the higher religions define for the individual his place in the universe and give him a feeling that he is relatively secure in an ordered, dependable universe. Man has the experience of being helpfully allied with what he cannot fully understand; he is a coordinate part of all of the mysterious energy and being and movement. The universe is a safe and permanent home.