The Definition of Religion
Religion is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with roots in the most diverse societies. It is a cultural and social institution that provides people with meaning, purpose, values, moral order, and hope for the future. In addition, it provides followers with structure and a sense of belonging. The promise of an afterlife is another key motivation for many religious believers. These functions are served by a wide variety of practices, including sermons, prayer, veneration of deities or saints, sacrifices, feasts, ritual bathing, matrimonial and funeral services, trance states, art and music, and even sport.
There has been an ongoing debate about the definition of religion that cuts across multiple disciplines, such as anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and religious studies. This article orients readers to this debate by providing an overview of the development of the term religion, a taxonomy of types of definitions (monothetic, polythetic, functional, mixed, and family resemblance), and some commentary and criticism.
A common criticism of monothetic definitions is that they are too narrow and focus exclusively on belief. In the case of religion, this definition would exclude religions that do not believe in supernatural beings, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Another problem with substantive definitions is that they reflect the peculiarity of Western religion, which focuses on personal experience and a dichotomy between nature and the supernatural, and fail to consider faith traditions that emphasize immanence or oneness, such as Jainism and Daoism.
Functional definitions, on the other hand, aim to capture a more general concept of religion by specifying some of the ways that people systematically organize their values. For example, Durkheim’s definition focuses on the social function of religion, and Tillich’s focuses on its axiological function of providing guidance in life.
Polythetic definitions are designed to address the perceived weaknesses of both functional and substantive approaches by taking a middle ground between the two. In this approach, scholars build a master list of features that are thought to be essential for any phenomenon to qualify as a religion. Then, they compare these features to any given phenomenon to see if it possesses a sufficient number of those features.
This approach has its own problems, however, since the features often are arbitrary and based on social conventions that can change over time. As a result, the number of features that are required for something to be considered a religion tends to fluctuate over time. For this reason, some academics prefer to avoid the use of polythetic definitions. Instead, they argue that a more accurate way to assess a phenomenon is to look for some of the features of a religion in the particular culture it is found in, which is known as a family resemblance approach. For instance, ice-skating is considered to be a religion in Canada but not in the United States because of its similarities to baseball.