What Is Religion?
Religion is the phenomenon whereby people give a special significance to life, orienting themselves toward its meaning and value. It is the primary form in which that valuation takes place, and people are willing to live according to and even die for what they deem most valuable. They enshrine this valuation in ritual, in belief and in practices. It is the basis for a moral order and provides for answers to important questions.
Its most fundamental feature is the feeling of dependence on a deity or deities; it also includes a sense of obligation to perform certain duties, especially those that pertain to worshipping or honoring the object of one’s faith, and the earnest direction of emotions and desires toward an ideal viewed as the highest excellence and rightly supreme over selfish objects of desire. It includes also the belief that man can bring himself into friendly, beneficent communion with the deities on whom he relies for help.
Most higher religions develop a considerable literature in which both the speculative and practical sides of religion are expressed. The former contains traditional myths and legends, stories of the providential dealings of God with mankind; the latter is composed of sacred books containing laws for social and domestic life, texts of sacred rites and prescriptions for their exact performance, and speculations concerning the nature of the Deity, the soul, and retribution after death. The practical side of religion is also embodied in the observance of certain days, such as those set apart by recurring phenomena of nature (the new and full moons, spring-time with its awakening vegetation, the two solstices); and religious festivals in which public sacrifices are made and in which special feasting and rest from ordinary business take place.