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Religion is a range of social system-, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, , , religious text, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spirituality elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. (2025). 9780470673508, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780470673508 It is an essentially contested concept. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith,Tillich, P. (1957) Dynamics of faith. Harper Perennial; (p. 1). and a supernatural being or beings.
The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Religions have sacred histories, , and mythologies, preserved in oral traditions, sacred texts, Religious symbol, and holy places, that may attempt to explain the origin of life, the universe, and other phenomena. Religious practice may include , , commemoration or veneration (of deities or ), , festivals, , , , matrimonial and funerary services, meditation, prayer, Religious music, Religious art, Religious dance, or public service.
There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, though nearly all of them have regionally based, relatively small followings. Four religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—account for over 77% of the world's population, and 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as nonreligious, meaning that the vast majority of remaining religions account for only 8% of the population combined. The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists, and agnostics, although many in the demographic still have various religious beliefs. Many are also organized religions, most definitively including the Abrahamic religions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, while others are arguably less so, in particular , indigenous religions, and some Eastern religions. A portion of the world's population are members of new religious movements.Eileen Barker, 1999, "New Religious Movements: their incidence and significance", New Religious Movements: challenge and response, Bryan Wilson and Jamie Cresswell editors, Routledge Scholars have indicated that Desecularization due to religious countries having generally higher birth rates.
The study of religion comprises a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for its origins and workings, including the ontological foundations of religious being and belief.
Roman general Julius Caesar used religiō to mean "obligation of an oath" when discussing captured soldiers making an oath to their captors.
The concept of "ancient religion" stems from modern interpretations of a range of practices that conform to a modern concept of religion, influenced by early modern and 19th century Christian discourse. The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries,
The Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as religion, also means law. Throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power.Neil McMullin. Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1984.
Though traditions, sacred texts, and practices have existed throughout time, most cultures did not align with Western conceptions of religion since they did not separate everyday life from the sacred. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and world religions first entered the English language.
According to the philologist Max Müller in the 19th century, the root of the English word religion, the Latin religiō, was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, pietas (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence).Max Müller, Natural Religion, p. 33, 1889 Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law.
An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations about ever defining the essence of religion. They observe that the way the concept today is used is a particularly modern construct that would not have been understood through much of history and in many cultures outside the West (or even in the West until after the Peace of Westphalia). The MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions states:
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a:
Alluding perhaps to Tylor's "deeper motive", Geertz remarked that:
The theologian Antoine Vergote took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency. He also emphasized the cultural reality of religion, which he defined as:
Peter Mandaville and Paul James intended to get away from the modernist dualisms or dichotomous understandings of immanence/transcendence, spirituality/materialism, and sacredness/secularity. They define religion as:
According to the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions, there is an experiential aspect to religion which can be found in almost every culture:
Anthropologists Lyle Steadman and Craig T. Palmer emphasized the communication of supernatural beliefs, defining religion as:
His contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through the finite spirit."Max Müller. "Lectures on the origin and growth of religion."
Edward Burnett Tylor defined religion in 1871 as "the belief in spiritual beings".Tylor, E.B. (1871) Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. Vol. 1. London: John Murray; (p. 424). He argued that narrowing the definition to mean the belief in a supreme deity or judgment after death or idolatry and so on, would exclude many peoples from the category of religious, and thus "has the fault of identifying religion rather with particular developments than with the deeper motive which underlies them." He also argued that the belief in spiritual beings exists in all known societies.
In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, the psychologist William James defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." By the term divine James meant "any object that is god like, whether it be a concrete deity or not" to which the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and gravity.
Sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." Sacred are not, however, limited to gods or spirits.That is how, according to Durkheim, Buddhism is a religion. "In default of gods, Buddhism admits the existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the practices derived from them" On the contrary, a sacred thing can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred." Religious beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and the virtues and powers which are attributed to them.
Echoes of James' and Durkheim's definitions are to be found in the writings of, for example, Frederick Ferré who defined religion as "one's way of valuing most comprehensively and intensively".Frederick Ferré, F. (1967) Basic modern philosophy of religion. Scribner, (p. 82). Similarly, for the theologian Paul Tillich, faith is "the state of being ultimately concerned", which "is itself religion. Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of man's spiritual life."Tillich, P. (1959) Theology of Culture. Oxford University Press; (p. 8).
When religion is seen in terms of sacred, divine, intensive valuing, or ultimate concern, then it is possible to understand why scientific findings and philosophical criticisms (e.g., those made by Richard Dawkins) do not necessarily disturb its adherents.Pecorino, P.A. (2001) Philosophy of Religion. Online Textbook . Philip A. Pecorino.
Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Ancient Rome, and Scandinavia, are usually categorized under the heading of mythology. Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or in development, are similarly called myths in the anthropology of religion. The term myth can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as misinterpreted mythology."Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Ed. Eugene Kennedy. New World Library .
In sociology, however, the term myth has a non-pejorative meaning. There, myth is defined as a story that is important for the group, whether or not it is objectively or provably true. Examples include the resurrection of their real-life founder Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin, is symbolic of the power of life over death, and is also said to be a historical event. But from a mythological outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, the of the death of an old life and the start of a new life is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations.
Daniel L. Pals mentions eight classical theories of religion, focusing on various aspects of religion: animism and magic, by E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer; the Psychoanalysis approach of Sigmund Freud; and further Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and Clifford Geertz.
Michael Stausberg gives an overview of contemporary theories of religion, including cognitive and biological approaches.
According to anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just, "Many of the great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort, as the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the imaginations of people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs. Charismatic individuals have emerged at many times and places in the world. It seems that the key to long-term success—and many movements come and go with little long-term effect—has relatively little to do with the prophets, who appear with surprising regularity, but more to do with the development of a group of supporters who are able to institutionalize the movement."
The development of religion has taken different forms in different cultures. Some religions place an emphasis on belief, while others emphasize practice. Some religions focus on the subjective experience of the religious individual, while others consider the activities of the religious community to be most important. Some religions claim to be universal, believing their and cosmology to be binding for everyone, while others are intended to be practiced only by a closely defined or localized group. In many places, religion has been associated with public institutions such as education, , the family, government, and politics hierarchies.
Anthropologists John Monoghan and Peter Just state that, "it seems apparent that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human life that are significant, persistent, and intolerable. One important way in which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune."
and delusions related to religious content occurs in about 60% of people with schizophrenia. While this number varies across cultures, this had led to theories about a number of influential religious phenomena and possible relation to psychotic disorders. A number of prophetic experiences are consistent with psychotic symptoms, although retrospective diagnoses are practically impossible. Schizophrenic episodes are also experienced by people who do not have belief in gods.
Religious content is also common in temporal lobe epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Atheistic content is also found to be common with temporal lobe epilepsy.
In the field of comparative religion, a common geographical classification of the main world religions includes Middle Eastern religions (including Zoroastrianism and Iranian religions), Indian religions, East Asian religions, African religions, American religions, Oceanic religions, and classical Hellenistic religions.
Some recent scholarship has argued that not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a certain philosophy, or even calling a given practice religious, rather than cultural, political, or social in nature, is limited.Brian Kemble Pennington Was Hinduism Invented? New York: Oxford University Press US, 2005. Russell T. McCutcheon. Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.Nicholas Lash. The beginning and the end of 'religion'. Cambridge University Press, 1996. The current state of psychological study about the nature of religiousness suggests that it is better to refer to religion as a largely invariant phenomenon that should be distinguished from cultural norms (i.e. religions).Joseph Bulbulia. "Are There Any Religions? An Evolutionary Explanation." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 17.2 (2005), pp. 71–100
A global poll in 2012 surveyed 57 countries and reported that 59% of the world's population identified as religious, 23% as Irreligion, 13% as convinced Atheism, and also a 9% decrease in identification as religious when compared to the 2005 average from 39 countries. A follow-up poll in 2015 found that 63% of the globe identified as religious, 22% as not religious, and 11% as convinced atheists. On average, women are more religious than men. Some people follow multiple religions or multiple religious principles at the same time, regardless of whether or not the religious principles they follow traditionally allow for syncretism. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers – p. 77, Christian Smith, Melina Lundquist Denton – 2005"Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes" in Shusaku Endo's Literary Works, Emi Mase-Hasegawa – 2008 New poll reveals how churchgoers mix eastern new age beliefs retrieved 26 July 2013 Unaffiliated populations are projected to drop, even when taking disaffiliation rates into account, due to differences in birth rates.
Scholars have indicated that Desecularization due to religious countries having higher birth rates in general.
There are also smaller groups, including:
Other denominations of Islam include Nation of Islam, Ibadi, Sufism, Quranism, Mahdavia, Ahmadiyya and non-denominational Muslims. Wahhabism is the dominant Muslim Maddhab in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Druze faith originally developed out of Isma'ilism, and it has sometimes been considered an Islamic school by some Islamic authorities, but Druze themselves do not identify as Muslims. Scholars classify the Druze faith as an independent Abrahamic religion because it developed its own unique doctrines and eventually separated from both Isma'ilism and Islam altogether. One of these doctrines includes the belief that Al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh was an Incarnation.
Mandaeism, sometimes also known as Sabianism (after the mysterious Sabians mentioned in the Quran, a name historically claimed by several religious groups), p. 5. is a Gnosticism, monotheistic and ethnic religion.
Other folk and new religions of East Asia and Southeast Asia such as Korean shamanism, Chondogyo, and Jeung San Do in Korea; indigenous Philippine folk religions in the Philippines; Shinto, Shugendo, Ryukyuan religion, and Japanese new religions in Japan; Satsana Phi in Laos; Vietnamese folk religion, and Cao Đài, Hòa Hảo in Vietnam.
Folk religions are often omitted as a category in surveys even in countries where they are widely practiced, e.g., in China.
There are also notable African diasporic religions practiced in the Americas, such as Santeria, Candomble, Haitian Vodun, Lucumi religion, Umbanda, and Macumba.
Zoroastrianism is based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster in the 6th century BCE. Zoroastrians worship the Creator deity Ahura Mazda. In Zoroastrianism, good and evil have distinct sources, with evil trying to destroy the creation of Mazda, and good trying to sustain it.
Kurdish religions include the traditional beliefs of the Yazidi, Alevi, and Ahl-e Haqq. Sometimes these are labeled Yazdânism.
Studies have focused on secularization. In particular, the issue of wearing religious symbols in public, such as headscarves that are banned in French schools, have received scholarly attention in the context of human rights and feminism.
The concepts of science and religion are a recent invention: the term religion emerged in the 17th century in the midst of colonization and globalization and the Protestant Reformation. The term science emerged in the 19th century out of natural philosophy in the midst of attempts to narrowly define those who studied nature (natural science),
In general, the scientific method gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to develop theories through elucidation of facts or evaluation by and thus only answers cosmological questions about the universe that can be observed and measured. It develops theory of the world which best fit physically observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is subject to later refinement, or even rejection, in the face of additional evidence. Scientific theories that have an overwhelming preponderance of favorable evidence are often treated as de facto verities in general parlance, such as the theories of general relativity and natural selection to explain respectively the mechanisms of gravity and evolution.
Religion does not have a method per se partly because religions emerge through time from diverse cultures and it is an attempt to find meaning in the world, and to explain humanity's place in it and relationship to it and to any posited entities. In terms of Christian theology and ultimate truths, people rely on reason, experience, scripture, and tradition to test and gauge what they experience and what they should believe. Furthermore, religious models, understanding, and metaphors are also revisable, as are scientific models.
Regarding religion and science, Albert Einstein states (1940): "For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action; it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts...Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determine the goals, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up."
Religion and morality are not synonymous. While it is often assumed in Christian thought that morality is ultimately based in religion, it can also have a Secular morality.
The study of religion and morality can be contentious due to ethnocentric views on morality, failure to distinguish between in group and out group altruism, and inconsistent definitions of religiosity.
Sociologist and political economist Max Weber has argued that Protestant Christian countries are wealthier because of their Protestant work ethic.Max Weber, 1904 1920. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism According to a study from 2015, Christians hold the largest amount of wealth (55% of the total world wealth), followed by Muslims (5.8%), Hindus (3.3%) and Jews (1.1%). According to the same study it was found that adherents under the classification Irreligion or other religions hold about 34.8% of the total global wealth (while making up only about 20% of the world population, see section on classification).
The authors of a subsequent study concluded that the influence of religion on health is largely beneficial, based on a review of related literature. According to academic James W. Jones, several studies have discovered "positive correlations between religious belief and practice and mental and physical health and longevity."
An analysis of data from the 1998 US General Social Survey, whilst broadly confirming that religious activity was associated with better health and well-being, also suggested that the role of different dimensions of spirituality/religiosity in health is rather more complicated. The results suggested "that it may not be appropriate to generalize findings about the relationship between spirituality/religiosity and health from one form of spirituality/religiosity to another, across denominations, or to assume effects are uniform for men and women.
Anthropologist Jack David Eller asserts that religion is not inherently violent, arguing "religion and violence are clearly compatible, but they are not identical." He asserts that "violence is neither essential to nor exclusive to religion" and that "virtually every form of religious violence has its nonreligious corollary."
Superstition has been described as the non-rational establishment of cause and effect. Religion is more complex and is often composed of social institutions and has a moral aspect. Some religions may include superstitions or make use of magical thinking. Adherents of one religion sometimes think of other religions as superstition. Some atheists, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as superstition.
The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110). "Superstition", it says, "is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16–22" (para. #2111)
Recent interfaith initiatives include A Common Word, launched in 2007 and focused on bringing Muslim and Christian leaders together, the "C1 World Dialogue", the Common Ground initiative between Islam and Buddhism, and a United Nations sponsored "World Interfaith Harmony Week".
(2025). 9781414498706, Gale, Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781414498706
Etymology and history of concept
Etymology
The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo-Norman (1200s Common Era) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what is sacred, reverence for the gods."Religion"
It is ultimately derived from the Latin word Religio]]. According to Roman philosopher Cicero, religiō comes from relegere: re (meaning "again") + lego (meaning "read"), where lego is in the sense of "go over", "choose", or "consider carefully". Contrarily, some modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell have argued that religiō is derived from religare: re (meaning "again") + ligare ("bind" or "connect"), which was made prominent by St. Augustine following the interpretation given by Lactantius in Divinae institutiones, IV, 28.In The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Toronto. Thomas Allen, 2004. In The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, ed. Betty Sue Flowers, New York, Anchor Books, 1991. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders: "we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden Fleece, of a knight 'of the religion of Avys'."
Religiō
In classic antiquity, religiō broadly meant conscientiousness, sense of Righteousness, moral obligation, or duty to anything. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religiō was understood as an individual virtue of worship in mundane contexts; never as doctrine, practice, or actual source of knowledge. (2025). 9780226317830, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226317830 In general, religiō referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God. Religiō was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context such as hesitation, caution, anxiety, or fear, as well as feelings of being bound, restricted, or inhibited. (2025). 9780823271207, Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823271207 The term was also closely related to other terms like scrupulus (which meant "very precisely"), and some Roman authors related the term superstitio (which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame) to religiō at times. When religiō came into English language around the 1200s as religion, it took the meaning of "life bound by monastic vows" or monastic orders. The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious and worldly things were separated, was not used before the 1500s. The concept of religion was first used in the 1500s to distinguish the domain of the Catholic Church and the domain of civil authorities; the Peace of Augsburg marks such instance, (2025). 9780470673508, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780470673508 which has been described by Christian Reus-Smit as "the first step on the road toward a European system of ."
(2025). 9781605063553, Forgotten Books. ISBN 9781605063553 Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder used the term religiō to describe the apparent respect given by elephants to the night sky. Cicero used religiō as being related to cultum deorum (worship of the gods).Cicero, De natura deorum Book II, Section 8.
In Ancient Greece, the Greek term (θρησκεία) was loosely translated into Latin as religiō in late antiquity. was sparsely used in classical Greece but became more frequently used in the writings of Josephus in the 1st century CE. It was used in mundane contexts and could mean multiple things from respectful fear to excessive or harmfully distracting practices of others, to cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word , which meant too much fear. (2025). 9780823271207, Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823271207
History of the concept of the "religion"
Religion is a modern concept. (2025). 9780367691806, Routledge. ISBN 9780367691806 The concept was invented recently in the English language and is found in texts from the 17th century due to events such as the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and globalization in the Age of Exploration, which involved contact with numerous foreign cultures with non-European languages. (2025). 9780226184487, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226184487 (1990). 9780521892933, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521892933 Some argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply the term religion to non-Western cultures, (2025). 9780801887567, Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801887567 while some followers of various faiths rebuke using the word to describe their own belief system.
(2025). 9780300154160, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300154160 despite the fact that ancient sacred texts like the Bible, the Quran, and others did not have a word or even a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written. (2025). 9780300154160, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300154160 (2025). 9780470673508, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780470673508 For example, there is no precise equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.Hershel Edelheit, Abraham J. Edelheit, History of Zionism: A Handbook and Dictionary , p. 3, citing Solomon Zeitlin, The Jews. Race, Nation, or Religion? (Philadelphia: Dropsie College Press, 1936). One of its central concepts is , meaning the walk or path sometimes translated as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life. Even though the beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, ancient Jews saw Jewish identity as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or regulated rituals. (2025). 9781118953426, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781118953426 In the 1st century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term (Judaism) as an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs. The very concept of "Judaism" was invented by the Christian Church, (2025). 9780813571614, Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813571614 and it was in the 19th century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity. The Greek word , which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus and Josephus, is found in the New Testament. is sometimes translated as "religion" in today's translations, but the term was understood as generic "worship" well into the medieval period. (2025). 9780300154160, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300154160 In the Quran, the Arabic word is often translated as religion in modern translations, but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed as "law."
(2025). 9780226184487, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226184487 (2025). 9780226412344, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226412344 (2025). 9780470673508, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780470673508 Native Americans were also thought of as not having religions and also had no word for religion in their languages either. No one self-identified as a Hindu or Buddhist or other similar terms before the 1800s. (2025). 9780470673508, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780470673508 "Hindu" has historically been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion since there was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning, but when Perry Expedition in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this idea. (2025). 9780226412344, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226412344 (2025). 9780199924943, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199924943
Definition
Scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. There are, however, two general definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical.Vgl. Johann Figl: Handbuch Religionswissenschaft: Religionen und ihre zentralen Themen. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003, , S. 65.Julia Haslinger: Die Evolution der Religionen und der Religiosität, s. Literatur Religionsgeschichte, S. 3–4, 8.Johann Figl: Handbuch Religionswissenschaft: Religionen und ihre zentralen Themen. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003, , S. 67.Peter Antes: Religion, religionswissenschaftlich. In: EKL Bd. 3, Sp. 1543. S. 98.
Modern Western
The concept of religion originated in the modern era in the Western culture. Parallel concepts are not found in many current and past cultures; there is no equivalent term for religion in many languages. Scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition, with some giving up on the possibility of a definition.McKinnon, AM. 2002. "Sociological Definitions, Language Games and the 'Essence' of Religion" . Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, vol 14, no. 1, pp. 61–83.Josephson, Jason Ānanda. (2012) The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 257 Others argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply it to non-Western cultures.
Classical
Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly translated as "the feeling of absolute dependence".
Aspects
Beliefs
The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs. The interplay between faith and reason, and their use as perceived support for religious beliefs, have been a subject of interest to philosophers and theologians.
Mythology
The word myth has several meanings:
Practices
The practices of a religion may include , , commemoration or veneration of a deity (god or goddess), , , Banquet, , , funeral, matrimony, meditation, prayer, religious music, religious art, sacred dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture. Oxford Dictionaries mythology, retrieved 9 September 2012
Social organisation
Religions have a societal basis, either as a living tradition which is carried by lay participants, or with an organized clergy, and a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership.
Academic study
A number of disciplines study the phenomenon of religion: theology, comparative religion, history of religion, evolutionary origin of religions, anthropology of religion, psychology of religion (including neurotheology and evolutionary psychology of religion), law and religion, and sociology of religion.
Theories
Sociological and anthropological theories of religion generally attempt to explain the origin and social function. These theories define what they present as universal characteristics of religious belief and practice.
Origins and development
The origin of religion is uncertain. There are a number of theories regarding the subsequent origins of religious practices.
Cultural system
While religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system".Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973 A critique of Geertz's model by Talal Asad categorized religion as "an anthropology category".Talal Asad, The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category, 1982. Richard Niebuhr's (1894–1962) five-fold classification of the relationship between Christ and culture, however, indicates that religion and culture can be seen as two separate systems, though with some interplay.Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1951) as cited by Domenic Marbaniang, "The Gospel and Culture: Areas of Conflict, Consent, and Conversion", Journal of Contemporary Christian Vol. 6, No. 1 (Bangalore: CFCC, Aug 2014), pp. 9–10
Social constructionism
One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spirituality practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings.Vergote, Antoine, Religion, belief and unbelief: a psychological study, Leuven University Press, 1997, p. 89 Among the main proponents of this theory of religion are Daniel Dubuisson, Timothy Fitzgerald, Talal Asad, and Jason Ānanda Josephson. The social constructionists argue that religion is a modern concept that developed from Christianity and was then applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures.
Cognitive science
Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. The field employs methods and theories from a very broad range of disciplines, including: cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, zoology, and ethology. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, practices, and schemas by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.
(2025). 9780195384871, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195384871
Comparativism
Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices of the world's religions. In general, the comparative study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of religion such as ethics, metaphysics, and the nature and form of salvation. Studying such material is meant to give one a richer and more sophisticated understanding of human beliefs and practices regarding the sacred, numinous, spirituality and Divinity."Human beings' relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, and divine" Encyclopædia Britannica (online, 2006), cited after
Classification
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative religion divided religious belief into philosophically defined categories called world religions. Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad categories:
Morphological classification
Some religion scholars classify religions as either universal religions that seek worldwide acceptance and actively look for new converts, such as the Baháʼí Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Jainism, while are identified with a particular ethnic group and do not seek converts. Others reject the distinction, pointing out that all religious practices, whatever their philosophical origin, are ethnic because they come from a particular culture.Timothy Fitzgerald. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York: Oxford University Press US, 2000.Craig R. Prentiss. Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity. New York: NYU Press, 2003. Tomoko Masuzawa. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Demographic classification
The five largest religious groups by world population, estimated to account for 5.8 billion people and 84% of the population, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (with the relative numbers for Buddhism and Hinduism dependent on the extent of syncretism), and traditional folk religions.
Christianity 2.3 31% Christianity by country Islam 1.8 24% Islam by country Hinduism 1.1 15% Hinduism by country Buddhism 0.5 6.9% Buddhism by country Folk religion 0.4 5.7% Total 6.1 83% Religions by country
Specific religions
Abrahamic
Abrahamic religions are monotheistic religions which believe they descend from Abraham.
Judaism
Judaism is the oldest Abrahamic religion, originating in the people of ancient Israel and Judah. The Torah is its foundational text, and is part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible. It is supplemented by oral tradition, set down in written form in later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. Judaism includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Within Judaism there are a variety of movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Torah and Oral Torah; historically, this assertion was challenged by various groups. The Jewish people were scattered after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Today there are about 13 million Jews, about 40 per cent living in Israel and 40 per cent in the United States. The largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism), Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism.
Christianity
Christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (1st century) as presented in the New Testament. The Christian faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and as Messiah and Lord. Almost all Christians believe in the Trinity, which teaches the unity of Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. Most Christians can describe their faith with the Nicene Creed. As the religion of Byzantine Empire in the first millennium and of Western Europe during the time of colonization, Christianity has been propagated throughout the world via missionary work. It is the world's largest religion, with about 2.3 billion followers as of 2015. The main divisions of Christianity are, according to the number of adherents:
Islam
Islam is a Monotheism religion based on the Quran, one of the holy books considered by Muslims to be Wahy by God, and on the Hadith of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is based on the unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the Abrahamic prophets of Judaism, Christianity and other Abrahamic religions before Muhammad. It is the most widely practiced religion of Southeast Asia, North Africa, Western Asia, and Central Asia, while Muslim-majority countries also exist in parts of South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Europe. There are also several , including Iran, Pakistan, Mauritania, and Afghanistan. With about 1.8 billion followers (2015), almost a quarter of world population are Muslims.
Other
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the three most popular Abrahamic faiths, however there are smaller and newer traditions that lay claim to the designation of Abrahamic as well.
For example, the Baháʼí Faith is a new religious movement that has links to the major Abrahamic religions as well as other religions (e.g., of Eastern philosophy). Founded in 19th-century Iran, it teaches the unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as additional prophets (Buddha, Mahavira), including its founder Bahá'u'lláh. It is an offshoot of Bábism. One of its divisions is the Orthodox Baháʼí Faith.
Even smaller regional Abrahamic groups also exist, including Samaritanism (primarily in Israel and the State of Palestine), the Rastafari movement (primarily in Jamaica), and Druze (primarily in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel).
Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley (2025). 9780195153859, Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. ISBN 9780195153859 Its adherents, the Mandaeans, consider John the Baptist to be their chief prophet. Mandaeans are the last surviving Gnostics from antiquity.
East Asian
East Asian religions (also known as Far Eastern religions or Taoic religions) consist of several religions of East Asia which make use of the concept of Tao (in Chinese), Dō (in Japanese or Korean) or Đạo (in Vietnamese). They include:
Taoism and Confucianism
Folk religions
Chinese folk religion: the indigenous religions of the Han Chinese, or, by metonymy, of all the populations of the Chinese cultural sphere. It includes the syncretism of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, Wuism, as well as many new religious movements such as Chen Tao, Falun Gong and Yiguandao.
Indian religions
Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent. They are sometimes classified as the dharmic religions, as they all feature dharma, the specific law of reality and duties expected according to the religion.
Hinduism
is a significant temple of the Hindu god Vishnu in Thiruvananthapuram, India.]]Hinduism is also called Vaidika Dharma, the dharma of the Vedas, although many practitioners refer to their religion as Sanātana Dharma ("the Eternal Dharma") which refers to the idea that its origins lie beyond human history. Vaidika Dharma is a synecdoche describing the similar philosophies of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and related groups practiced or founded in the Indian subcontinent. Concepts most of them share in common include karma, caste, reincarnation, , , and darśana.Hinduism is variously defined as a religion, set of religious beliefs and practices, religious tradition etc. For a discussion on the topic, see: "Establishing the boundaries" in Gavin Flood (2003), pp. 1–17. René Guénon in his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu doctrines (1921 ed.), Sophia Perennis, , proposes a definition of the term religion and a discussion of its relevance (or lack of) to Hindu doctrines (part II, chapter 4, p. 58). Deities in Hinduism are referred to as Deva (masculine) and Devi (feminine).Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary" Etymologically and Philologically Arranged to cognate Indo-European Languages, Motilal Banarsidass, p. 496John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (1998), Devi: Goddesses of India, Motilal Banarsidass, , p. 2William K Mahony (1997), The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination, State University of New York Press, , p. 18 Major deities include Vishnu, Lakshmi, Shiva, Parvati, Brahma and Saraswati. These deities have distinct and complex personalities yet are often viewed as aspects of the same Ultimate Reality called Brahman.Knut Jacobsen (2008), Theory and Practice of Yoga : 'Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson, Motilal Banarsidass, , pp. 77–78 Hinduism is one of the most ancient of still-active religious belief systems,p. 434 Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions By Wendy Doniger, M. Webster, Merriam-Webster, Incp. 219 Faith, Religion & Theology By Brennan Hill, Paul F. Knitter, William Madges with origins perhaps as far back as prehistoric times.p. 6 The World's Great Religions By Yoshiaki Gurney Omura, Selwyn Gurney Champion, Dorothy Short Therefore, Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world.
Jainism
in Karnataka]]Jainism, taught primarily by Rishabhanatha (the founder of ahimsa) is an ancient Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence, truth and anekantavada for all forms of living beings in this universe; which helps them to eliminate all the Karmas, and hence to attain freedom from the cycle of birth and death (saṃsāra), that is, achieving nirvana. Jains are found mostly in India. According to Dundas, outside of the Jain tradition, historians date the Mahavira as about contemporaneous with the Buddha in the 5th-century BCE, and accordingly the historical Parshvanatha, based on the c. 250-year gap, is placed in 8th or 7th century BCE.
Buddhism
, Laos]]Buddhism was founded by Gautama Buddha in the 5th century BCE. Buddhists generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their dukkha by understanding the dharma, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that is, achieving nirvana.
Sikhism
]]Sikhism is a panentheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak and ten successive Sikh gurus in 15th-century Punjab region. It is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world, with approximately 30 million Sikhs. are expected to embody the qualities of a Sant-Sipāhī—a saint-soldier, have control over one's internal Five Thieves and be able to be constantly immersed in virtues clarified in the Guru Granth Sahib. The principal beliefs of Sikhi are faith in Waheguru—represented by the phrase ik Onkar, one cosmic divine actioner (God), who prevails in everything, along with a praxis in which the Sikh is enjoined to engage in social reform through the pursuit of justice for all human beings.
Indigenous and folk
Indigenous religions or ethnic religion refers to a broad category of traditional religions that can be characterised by shamanism, animism and ancestor worship, where traditional means "indigenous, that which is aboriginal or foundational, handed down from generation to generation...".J.O. Awolalu (1976) What is African Traditional Religion? Studies in Comparative Religion Vol. 10, No. 2. (Spring, 1976). These are religions that are closely associated with a particular group of people, ethnicity or tribe; they often have no formal creeds or sacred texts.Pew Research Center (2012) The Global Religious Landscape. A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Major Religious Groups as of 2010 . The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Some religions are syncretic, fusing diverse religious beliefs and practices.
Traditional African
African traditional religion encompasses the traditional religious beliefs of people in Africa. In West Africa, these religions include the Akan religion, Dahomey (Fon) mythology, Efik mythology, Odinani, Serer religion, and Yoruba religion, while Bushongo mythology, Mbuti mythology, Lugbara mythology, Dinka religion, and Lotuko mythology come from central Africa. Southern African traditions include Akamba mythology, Masai mythology, Malagasy mythology, San religion, Lozi mythology, Tumbuka mythology, and Zulu mythology. Bantu mythology is found throughout central, southeast, and southern Africa. In north Africa, these traditions include Berber and ancient Egyptian.
Iranian
Iranian religions are ancient religions whose roots predate the Islamization of Greater Iran. Nowadays these religions are practiced only by minorities.
New religious movements
Related aspects
Law
The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980. Scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. Exponents look at canon law, natural law, and state law, often in a comparative perspective.Norman Doe, Law and Religion in Europe: A Comparative Introduction (2011).W. Cole Durham and Brett G. Scharffs, eds., Law and religion: national, international, and comparative perspectives (Aspen Pub, 2010). Specialists have explored themes in Western history regarding Christianity and justice and mercy, rule and equity, and discipline and love.John Witte Jr. and Frank S. Alexander, eds., Christianity and Law: An Introduction (Cambridge U.P. 2008) Common topics of interest include marriage and the familyJohn Witte Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (1997). and human rights.John Witte, Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (2008). Outside of Christianity, scholars have looked at law and religion links in the Muslim Middle East and pagan Rome.Alan Watson, The state, law, and religion: pagan Rome (University of Georgia Press, 1992).
Science
Science acknowledges reason and empirical evidence; and religions include revelation, faith and sacredness whilst also acknowledging philosophical and metaphysical explanations with regard to the study of the universe. Both science and religion are not monolithic, timeless, or static because both are complex social and cultural endeavors that have changed through time across languages and cultures. (2025). 9780802828231, W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.. ISBN 9780802828231
(2025). 9780226089287, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226089287 (2025). 9780226482149, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226482149 and the phrase religion and science emerged in the 19th century due to the reification of both concepts. It was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism first emerged. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin roots of both science ( scientia) and religion ( religio) were understood as inner qualities of the individual or virtues, never as doctrines, practices, or actual sources of knowledge.
Morality
Many religions have value frameworks regarding personal behavior meant to guide adherents in determining between right and wrong. These include the Five Vows of Jainism, Judaism's halakha, Islam's sharia, Catholicism's canon law, Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path, and Zoroastrianism's good thoughts, good words, and good deeds concept, among others.
(2025). 9780078038242, McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780078038242
Politics
Impact
Religion has had a significant impact on the political system in many countries. Notably, most Muslim-majority countries adopt various aspects of sharia, the Islamic law. Some countries even define themselves in religious terms, such as Iran. The sharia thus affects up to 23% of the global population, or 1.57 billion people who are Muslim world. However, religion also affects political decisions in many western countries. For instance, in the United States, 51% of voters would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who did not believe in God, and only 6% more likely. The Economist explains: The role of religion in America's presidential race , The Economist, 25 February 2016 Christians made up 92% of members of the US Congress, compared with 71% of the general public (in 2014). At the same time, while 23% of US adults are religiously unaffiliated, only one former member of Congress (Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona), or 0.2% of that body, claims no religious affiliation. In most European countries, however, religion has a much smaller influence on politics Europe, religion and politics:Old world wars , The Economist, 22 April 2014 although it used to be much more important. For instance, same-sex marriage and abortion were illegal in many European countries until recently, following Christian (usually Catholicism) doctrine. Several European leaders are atheists (e.g., France's former president Francois Hollande or Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras). In Asia, the role of religion differs widely between countries. For instance, India is still one of the most religious countries and religion still has a strong impact on politics, given that Hindu nationalists have been targeting minorities like the Muslims and the Christians, who historically belonged to the lower castes.Lobo, L. 2000 Religion and Politics in India , America Magazine, 19 February 2000 By contrast, countries such as China or Japan are largely secular and thus religion has a much smaller impact on politics.
Secularism
Secularization is the transformation of the politics of a society from close identification with a particular religion's values and institutions toward nonreligious values and secular institutions. The purpose of this is frequently modernization or protection of the population's religious diversity.
Economics
One study has found there is a negative correlation between self-defined religiosity and the wealth of nations. In other words, the richer a nation is, the less likely its inhabitants to call themselves religious, whatever this word means to them (Many people identify themselves as part of a religion (not irreligion) but do not self-identify as religious).
Health
Mayo Clinic researchers examined the association between religious involvement and spirituality, and physical health, mental health, health-related quality of life, and other health outcomes. The authors reported that: "Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide."
Violence
Critics such as Hector Avalos, Regina Schwartz, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins have argued that religions are inherently violent and harmful to society by using violence to promote their goals, in ways that are endorsed and exploited by their leaders.
Animal sacrifice
Some (but not all) religions practise animal sacrifice, the ritual killing and offering of an animal to appease or maintain favour with a deity. It has been banned in India.
Superstition
Greek and Roman pagans, who saw their relations with the gods in political and social terms, scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods ( deisidaimonia), as a slave might fear a cruel and capricious master. The Romans called such fear of the gods superstitio. Ancient Greek historian Polybius described superstition in ancient Rome as an instrumentum regni, an instrument of maintaining the cohesion of the Roman Empire.Polybius, The Histories, VI 56.
Agnosticism and atheism
The terms atheist (lack of belief in gods) and agnostic (belief in the unknowability of the existence of gods), though specifically contrary to theistic (e.g., Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) religious teachings, do not by definition mean the opposite of religious. The true opposite of religious is the word irreligious. Irreligion describes an absence of any religion; antireligion describes an active opposition or aversion toward religions in general. There are religions (including Buddhism and Taoism) that classify some of their followers as agnostic, atheistic, or nontheism. For example, in ancient India, there were large atheistic movements and traditions (Hindu atheism) that rejected the Vedas, such as the atheistic Ājīvika and the Ajñana which taught agnosticism.
Interfaith cooperation
Because religion continues to be recognized in Western thought as a universal impulse, many religious practitioners have aimed to band together in interfaith dialogue, cooperation, and religious peacebuilding. The first major dialogue was the Parliament of the World's Religions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which affirmed universal values and recognition of the diversity of practices among different cultures. The 20th century has been especially fruitful in use of interfaith dialogue as a means of solving ethnic, political, or even religious conflict, with Christian–Jewish reconciliation representing a complete reverse in the attitudes of many Christian communities towards Jews.
Culture
Culture and religion have usually been seen as closely related. Paul Tillich looked at religion as the soul of culture and culture as the form or framework of religion.Edward L. Queen, Encyclopedia of American Religious History, Volume 1 Facts on File, 1996. p. vi. In his own words:
Religion as ultimate concern is the meaning-giving substance of culture, and culture is the totality of forms in which the basic concern of religion expresses itself. In abbreviation: religion is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion. Such a consideration definitely prevents the establishment of a dualism of religion and culture. Every religious act, not only in organized religion, but also in the most intimate movement of the soul, is culturally formed.Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, Robert C. Kimball (ed), (Oxford University Press, 1959). p.42
Ernst Troeltsch, similarly, looked at culture as the soil of religion and thought that, therefore, transplanting a religion from its original culture to a foreign culture would kill it in the same manner that transplanting a plant from its natural soil to an alien soil would kill it.Eric J. Sharpe, "Religion and Cultures", An inaugural lecture delivered on 6 July 1977 by Eric J. Sharpe, Professor of Religious Studies in the University of Sydney. Accessed at Openjournals on 22 June 2018 However, there have been many attempts in the modern pluralistic situation to distinguish culture from religion.See Taslima Nasreen, "I Say, Three Cheers For Ayaan" , Outlook, The Magazine 28 August 2006. Also, Nemani Delaibatiki, "Religion and the Vanua" Fiji Sun 8 July 2017 in which the distinctive elements of culture against religion are taken from Domenic Marbaniang, "Difference Between Culture and Religion: A Proposal Requesting Response" , 12 October 2014. Domenic Marbaniang has argued that elements grounded on beliefs of a metaphysical nature (religious) are distinct from elements grounded on nature and the natural (cultural). For instance, language (with its grammar) is a cultural element while sacralization of language in which a particular religious scripture is written is more often a religious practice. The same applies to music and the arts.Domenic Marbaniang, "The Gospel and Culture: Areas of Conflict, Consent, and Conversion", Journal of Contemporary Christian Vol. 6, No. 1 (Bangalore: CFCC, Aug 2014), pp. 7–17
Criticism
Criticism of religion is criticism of the ideas, the truth, or the practice of religion, including its political and social implications.
See also
Notes
Sources
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Preface), Red Wheel/Weiser, 2006,
Further reading
External links
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Religion Statistics from UCB Libraries GovPubs
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of "Religion" in International Law – Harvard Human Rights Journal article from the President and Fellows of Harvard College (2003)
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