Religion is a complex, sometimes controversial social phenomenon. It encompasses a wide variety of worldviews, beliefs, practices, and institutions. It influences the way people think about and organize their lives. It can bring them together in shared values, and it can also divide and stress them. It can give them meaning and purpose, and it can help them to navigate a world that seems to be in chaos.
One of the problems with discussing religion is deciding how to define it. Some scholars have used a functional definition that sees it as the beliefs and behaviors that support social cohesion. Others have used a substantive definition that sees it as the beliefs and practices that give meaning to life, or even that are a fundamental part of human nature. Still others have tried to use a phenomenological approach, with the goal of discerning what characteristics are common among phenomena that people label religious.
A lot of different kinds of things have been called religions, from ice-skating to communism. Some scholars have argued that this shows a lack of clarity about what religion actually is. However, it is hard to see how the definition should be clarified, because all of these ways of doing religion have some of the same features. They all involve rituals; they all emphasize belief in a supernatural being; they all involve some kind of morality; and they all seem to have a strong influence on people’s behavior.
In fact, the simplest way to describe what makes something religious is that it involves a strong sense of moral obligation to obey certain rules. Some of these rules may be strictly legal, and others may be more loosely written. In addition, there is often a strong feeling of devotion and love toward the object of worship. This devotedness can be manifested in a wide range of ways, including prayerfully, generously, ecstatically, sacrificially, puritanically, and ritualistically.
Nevertheless, many scholars have found that it is not possible to draw sharp lines about what is and is not religious, or even to define religion at all. This is because the concept of religion is a category-concept, and the paradigmatic examples are the so-called “world religions,” Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism.
Another problem is that the word itself is a loaded one, and it can have political and polemical connotations. This can make it difficult to discuss the topic without entering into debates about whether the rules, teachings, offenses, or history of a particular religion are good or bad. This can make discussions of religion dull and tiresome, and it also limits their usefulness.
There are some other issues that need to be considered. For example, it is often argued that using a substantive definition of religion limits the role of the religious person. If the functional definition is used, the religious person seems to be a passive social actor that is simply manipulated by the religion. In contrast, a substantive definition tends to resist this ideological, passive image of humans and empowers the religious person to maintain his or her own viewpoint.