Functionalist

Evolutionist

Sacred Profane

Symbolic

Evans pritchard 1956 first recognised symbolic aspect of religion and inspired others to approach religion through symbols. scholars studied meanings given by the participants to the elements of religion and rituals along with the own interpretation of anthropologists.
Victor Turner, Mary Douglas and clifford geertz were major players.
Turner studied Ndembu rituals. declassified there rituals into two categories, life cycle crisis rituals and ritual of affliction. There is symbolic meaning in every app and performance.
According to Mary Douglas the emphasis on sacred is created when people live together and try to coerce one another to conform to a moral idea. But these symbols may not be directly related to a meaning however they can be related to to others symbols and these interlinkages of symbols creates a pattern of meaning. The meaning finally the presents society as divine order and anything that distorts it is called unholy and polluting.

she argued that social conditions and social life govern the fundamental attitude to the spirit and matter.

religion is part of cultural system and symbols are any object, action event, relation that serves as a vehicle for a conception.
He believed that people at according to the systems of meaning that they have and job of the anthropologist is to interpret those meanings and provide their description. System of meaning engages in continuous dialogue between the meanings acting upon people and people acting upon the meaning just like culture shapes the people and people shape the culture.
Reason creates a conception of the world for the group and individuals. It also creates conception of the self and relation between the self and the world.
Therefore by studying the symbols and their meaning, we can understand religion of a culture.

Symbolist school studies everyday interaction of symbols and the people. Interaction of religious leaders people symbols are core interest.

Marxist

Religion is a way to tu divert attention of the people from their life ministries religion is an outcome of human distress and consequences of human struggle with their past. Religion allows them to get along with the capitalist culture.
Opium for the masses.

Structuralist

Levi Strauss argued that human mind thinks in binary system and cultural patterns arise out of various combinations of this binary thinking. Religion also emerges out of binary thinking.
This way he studied myth and argue that myth is a language that expresses how the human mind thinks. By studying the myth we can understand how human mind interpret the world.
In India, Dumont 1959 structuralist perspective of religion and argued that the opposition of of purity and impurity creates religion and religious rituals. Due to purity associated with vegetarianism gods and Brahmins, only brahmins interact with the gods and only vegetables can be offered to them. Similarly certain things like non-vegetarian, working with leather and dead bodies, is considered impure therefore people were put in lower caste hierarchy and caste system emerged.

Religious approaches 1-1