The Durkheimian obsession with religion is altogether well known, if not entirely well understood. It has been the custom of social scientists, especially, to assume proprietary rights over the entire Durkheimian effort as a flagship launch of a scientific study of society. But the picture of the Durkheimian relation to religion, I suggest, implies a far more interesting and curious Durkheimian ambitions than what the conventional social science creation story would relate. What does one make of what can only be called an amazing poetic outburst about religion from one of Durkheim's closest confederates, Henri Hubert? Appealing to the imagery of something like a great sprawling Banyan tree, Hubert says,

What I shall try to do is pierce some of that ‘sultry shade’ surrounding Durkheim's concept of religion. I shall be arguing that Durkheim's concept of religion emerged from attractions to and struggles with major ideological and, indeed, religious communities making up the discursive landscape of the study of religion in Paris's École Pratique des Hautes Études, Fifth Section – ‘Sciences Religieuses’. Even in what was, at least officially, an open laic academic environment of the Fifth Section, Durkheim and his confederates would discover that studying religion sociologically would inevitably pit them against the covert and overt religious agendas of some of their most powerful colleagues.