Passage: Emile Durkheim argued that the fundamental distinction in all religious thought is the division of the world into two domains: the sacred and the profane. The sacred represents those things set apart as extraordinary and forbidden, while the profane encompasses the mundane aspects of daily life. For Durkheim, the sacred is not necessarily linked to the supernatural, but rather to the collective ideals of a community. When a group gathers to worship a sacred object, they are, in essence, worshiping their own social bond. In this sense, religion serves as a powerful mechanism for social integration, providing a shared symbolic language that reinforces the moral obligations individuals owe to one another. Consequently, the decline of traditional religion may not signal the end of the sacred, but rather a shift in which objects a society chooses to hallow.