What Is Religion?
Religion is a complex phenomenon that makes people feel a sense of community and belonging. It provides a framework to organize values and beliefs, and it is the source of moral guidance that helps people in their daily lives. Religion also has a powerful effect on how humans behave and how they treat others. Many religions emphasize doing good for others and the well-being of others, resulting in participation in things like charitable organizations.
However, there is not much agreement among scholars on what Religion actually is, or even if it exists at all. Some use functional approaches, such as Durkheim’s definition of Religion as a means to create solidarity in groups. Others, such as Paul Tillich, use a substantive definition of Religion that involves any dominant concern that serves to organize a person’s values (whether or not these concerns involve belief in any unusual realities).
Other scholars, such as those who study the human mind, argue that Religion answers psychological needs in people by providing meaning and direction for their lives. Some, such as neuroscientists, argue that certain aspects of the brain’s circuitry can give rise to religious experiences.
Whether or not these various definitions of Religion are correct, it is clear that the concept has broad semantic range and that the disparate practices that now fall within this category do not have much in common. This raises questions about the appropriateness of using the term to sort social reality, and about how to understand the emergence of this contested concept in the same way that we would examine the emergence of other abstract concepts used to sort cultural kinds, such as “literature” or “democracy.” (See Possamai 2018: ch. 5, and Laurence and Margolis 1999: ch. 2.)