What is Religion?

Many argue that the etymology of religion resides in the Latin word religare, which means "to tie, to tie". This seems to be favored by the assumption that it helps to explain the power that religion has to bind a person to a community, culture, course of action, ideology, etc. The Oxford English Dictionary emphasizes, however, that the etymology of the word is doubtful. Previous writers such as Cicero connected the term with relegere, which means "to reread" (perhaps to emphasize the ritual nature of religions?).

Some argue that religion does not even exist in the first place: there is only culture and religion is simply a significant aspect of human culture. Jonathan Z. Smith writes in Imagining Religion:

"... while there is a staggering amount of human data, phenomena, experiences and expressions that could be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as a religion - there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study. It is created for the scholar's analytical purposes by his imaginary acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart from the academy. "
It is true that many societies do not draw a clear line between their culture and what scholars would call "religion", so Smith certainly has a valid point. This does not necessarily mean that religion does not exist, but it is worth remembering that even when we think we have a hand on what religion is, we may be deceived because we are unable to distinguish what belongs only to the "religion" of a culture and what is part of the wider culture itself.

Functional and substantive definitions of religion
Many academic and academic attempts to define or describe religion can be classified into two types: functional or substantial. Each represents a very distinct perspective on the nature of the function of religion. Although it is possible for one person to accept both types as valid, in reality most people will tend to focus on one type excluding the other.

Substantial definitions of religion
The type a person focuses on can say a lot about what he thinks about religion and how he perceives religion in human life. For those who focus on substantive or essentialist definitions, religion is all about content: if you believe in certain types of things you have a religion, while if you don't believe them, you don't have a religion. Examples include belief in gods, belief in spirits or belief in something known as "the sacred".

Accepting a substantial definition of religion means considering religion simply as a type of philosophy, a bizarre belief system or perhaps just a primitive understanding of nature and reality. From a substantial or essentialist point of view, religion originated and survived as a speculative enterprise which consists in trying to understand ourselves or our world and has nothing to do with our social or psychological life.

Functional definitions of religion
For those who focus on functionalist definitions, religion is all it does: if your belief system plays a particular role in your social life, in your society or in your psychological life, then it is a religion; otherwise, it is something else (like philosophy). Examples of functionalist definitions include the description of religion as something that unites a community or alleviates a person's fear of mortality.

Accepting these functionalist descriptions leads to a radically different understanding of the origin and nature of religion than the substantive definitions. From a functionalist point of view, religion does not exist to explain our world but rather to help us survive in the world by binding us together socially or supporting us psychologically and emotionally. Rituals, for example, exist to bring us all together as a unit or to preserve our sanity in a chaotic world.

The definition of religion used on this site does not focus on the functionalist or essentialist perspective of religion; instead, it attempts to incorporate both the types of beliefs and the types of functions that religion often has. So why take so long to explain and discuss these types of definitions?

Although we do not use a specifically functionalist or essentialist definition here, it is true that these definitions can offer interesting ways of looking at religion, allowing us to focus on an aspect that we would otherwise have ignored. It is necessary to understand why each is valid to better understand why neither is superior to the other. Finally, since many books on religion tend to prefer one type of definition over another, understanding what they are can provide a clearer view of the authors' prejudices and assumptions.

Problematic definitions of religion
Definitions of religion tend to suffer from one of two problems: either they are too narrow and exclude many belief systems that most agree are religious, or they are too vague and ambiguous, suggesting that almost everything and everything is a religion. Since it is so easy to fall into one problem in an effort to avoid the other, debates about the nature of religion will probably never cease.

A good example of too narrow a definition being too narrow is the common attempt to define "religion" as "belief in God", effectively excluding polytheistic and atheistic religions, while including theists who do not have a religious belief system. We see this problem most of the time among those who assume that the rigid monotheistic nature of the western religions with which they are most familiar must somehow be a necessary feature of religion in general. It is rare to see this mistake made by scholars, at least more.

A good example of a vague definition is the tendency to define religion as a "world view" - but how can any world view qualify as a religion? It would be ridiculous to think that every belief system or ideology is even religious, no matter a religion in all respects, but this is the consequence of how some try to use the term.

Some have argued that religion is not difficult to define and the plethora of conflicting definitions is proof of how easy it really is. The real problem, according to this position, lies in finding a definition that is empirically useful and empirically testable - and it is certainly true that so many bad definitions would be quickly abandoned if the proposers committed themselves to a little work to test them.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists the traits of religions rather than declaring religion as one thing or another, arguing that the more markers are present in a belief system, the more "religious-like" it is:

Belief in supernatural beings.
A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
Ritual acts centered on sacred objects.
A moral code deemed sanctioned by the gods.
Typically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of the ritual and which are connected in the idea with the gods.
Prayer and other forms of communication with the gods.
A world view, or a general image of the world as a whole and the individual's place in it. This image contains some specifics of a purpose or a general point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it.
A more or less total organization of one's life based on the world view.
A social group united by the above.
This definition captures much of what religion is in different cultures. It includes sociological, psychological and historical factors and allows larger gray areas in the concept of religion. It also recognizes that "religion" exists in a continuum with other types of belief systems, such that some are not religious at all, some are very close to religions and some are certainly religions.

This definition is not without flaws, however. The first marker, for example, concerns "supernatural beings" and provides "gods" as an example, but later only gods are mentioned. The concept of "supernatural beings" is also a bit too specific; Mircea Eliade defined religion in reference to a focus on the "sacred", and this is a good substitute for "supernatural beings" because not all religions revolve around the supernatural.

A better definition of religion
Since the defects in the definition above are relatively minor, it is easy to make a few small adjustments and find a much improved definition of what religion is:

Believe in something sacred (for example, gods or other supernatural beings).
A distinction between sacred and profane spaces and / or objects.
Ritual acts focused on sacred spaces and / or objects.
A moral code believed to have a sacred or supernatural basis.
Typically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred spaces and / or objects and during the practice of the ritual that focuses on sacred spaces, objects or beings.
Prayer and other forms of communication with the supernatural.
A worldview, an ideology or a general image of the world as a whole and the place of individuals within it which contains a description of a general purpose or point of the world and how individuals adapt to it.
A more or less complete organization of one's life based on this world view.
A social group linked from and around the above.
This is the definition of religion which describes religious systems but not non-religious systems. It includes the common characteristics in belief systems generally recognized as religions without focusing on specific characteristics unique to a few.