Religion is a large and complex phenomenon. It has a rich variety of beliefs and practices and many forms. It includes both formalized and traditional folk religions, some of which are quite small. It encompasses a wide range of attitudes and emotions, from anger and hatred to compassion and forgiveness. It has an extensive history, from ancient times to the present. It has powerful social functions, promoting both unity and conflict.
It is a set of values that helps guide people’s lives and their behavior. It is a way to help them achieve happiness and spiritual satisfaction. It is a source of moral guidance, encouraging ethical behavior and teaching them how to live life as a good citizen. It is also a force that drives them to work together as a community or nation in pursuit of shared goals. Religions are also a source of inspiration and a focus for people’s lives, giving them meaning and purpose.
One of the challenges for scholars is how to define “religion”. In a broad sense, it can be defined as any belief in a transcendent supernatural being or cosmological order. However, this procrustean approach to definition excludes many beliefs and practices that are widely held in the world today.
For some scholars, the answer has been to treat the concept of religion as a social genus, a category that appears in all cultures. This is not without its problems, but it does make it possible to analyze trends in religion and compare different cultures.
A second approach is to define religion functionally, as the set of beliefs and practices that generate social cohesion or provide orientation in life. This is less controversial than the previous approach but still suffers from its own limitations. It excludes the religions of indigenous people and others that are not well documented or studied. It is also difficult to compare different cultures with regard to their religiosity if data are collected through surveys rather than from official census reports.
Some scholars have tried to find a middle ground between these two approaches by using a pluralistic model. In this model, the concept of religion is viewed as a collection of different kinds of religious experiences and practices, each with its own distinctive characteristics. Some of these characteristics are proximate, such as goals that can be attained in this life (e.g., a wiser, more productive, more charitable, or more successful life) while others are ultimate, such as rewards or punishment in the afterlife or in the cosmological order.
Other scholars have been more critical of the idea that there is a universal religion. They have used a variety of analytical methods to pull back the camera, so to speak, and to examine how it is that what we call a religion changes depending on the definition or method of analysis. This is sometimes called the reflexive turn in the study of religion. It has resulted in the use of terms such as assemblage, constellation, nexus, network, and system to describe a religious phenomena that was previously seen as unproblematically “there.” This approach has been referred to by some scholars as a “monothetic-set definition” of religion.