Abstract
In drawing on the concepts of economics, no doubt Pierre Bourdieu has gone furthest by conceptualizing society as a system of maximization for different types of capital. He treats religion as a particular kind of symbolic capital which fulfils functions of social legitimation and compensation. With some exceptions, the sociology of religion has scarcely been influenced by utilitarianism or rational action theory. If rationalization has played an excessive role in the explanation of secularization to the detriment of hedonization, that is due more to the influence of Weber. Considering that religions are orientated towards ultimate goals, we analyse them as specific systems of maximization (applied to a case study) and aim to sociologize the affective behaviour which is the kernel of what is called residually “irrational”.