Definition of Religion
There is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. [1] [2] It may be
defined as cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified
places, prophesies, ethics, or organizations, that relate humanity to the supernatural,
transcendental, or spiritual.
Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine [3],
sacred things [4], faith [5], a supernatural being or supernatural beings [6] or “some sort of
ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life”. [7]
Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities),
sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services,
meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public services, or other aspects of human culture.
Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures,
and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain
symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have side purpose of
explaining the origin of life, the universe and other things. Traditionally, faith, in addition to
reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs. [8]
There an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, [9] but about 84% of the world’s
population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. [10] The religiously unaffiliated demographic
includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists and agnostics. While
the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have
various religious beliefs. [11]
The study of religion encompasses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology,
comparative religion and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations
for the origins and workings of religion.
Concept and Etymology
Religion (from O.Fr. religion religious community, from L. religionem (nom. Religio) “respect for
what is sacred, reverence for Gods” ]13]) is derived from the Latin religio, the ultimate origins
of which are obscure. One possible interpretation traced to Cicero, connects lego read, i.e re
(again) with lego in the sense of choose, go over again or consider carefully. The definition of
religio by Cicero is cultum deorum, “the proper performance of rites in veneration of the
Gods.” [14] modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the derivation
from ligare bind, connect, probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e re (again) + ligare or to
reconnect, which was made prominent by St. Augustine, followingthe interpretation given by
Lactantius in Divinae institutions, IV, 28. [15][16] The medieval usage alternates with order in
designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders: “we hear the ‘religion’ of the
Golden Fleece, of a knight ‘of the religion of avys”. [17]
In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religio was understood as an
individual virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice or actual source of knowledge. [18]
furthermore, religio referred to broad social obligations to family, neighbors, rulers, and even
towards God. [19] When religio came into English around 1200s as religion, it took the
meaning of “life bound my monastic vows”. [19] The compartmentalized concept of religion,
where religious things were separated from wordly things, was not used before the 1500s. [19]
The concept of religion was first used in 1500s to distinguish the domain of the church and the
domain of civil authorities. [19]
The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries, [20] [21] 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. [2] [19] for example, there is no precise equivalent to
religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial,
or ethic identities. [22] One of its central concepts is halakha, meaning the walk or path
sometimes translated as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of
daily life. [23] The Greek word threskeia, which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus
and Josephus, is found in the new Testament. Threskeia is sometimes translated as religion in
today’s translations, however, the term was understood as worship well into the medieval
period. [2] In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as a religion in modern
translations, but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed din as law. [2] Even in the 1st
century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term ioudaismos, which some translate as Judaism
today, even though he used it as an ethnic term, not one linked to the modern abstract
concepts of religion as a set beliefs. [2] 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. [24] [25]
The modern concept of religion, as an abstraction that entails distinct sets of beliefs or
doctrines, is a recent invention in the English language since such usage began with texts from
the 17th century due to 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. [18] [26] Some argue that regardless of its definition, it is not
appropriate to apply the term religion to non-western cultures. [27] [28] Others argue that
using religion on non-western cultures distorts what people do and believe. [29]
It was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and
world religions first emerged. [18] [30] [19] No one self-identified as a Hindu or Buddhist or
other similar identities before the 1800s. [19] Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept
religion since there was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning,
but when American warships appeared off the coast of japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese
government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country
had to contend with this western idea. [30] [31]
According to the philologist Max Muller in the 19th century, the roof of the English word religion,
the Latin religio, was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the Gods, careful
pondering of divine things, piety (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence). [32] [33]
Max Muller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia and
India as having a similar power structure at this point in the history. What is called ancient
religion today, they would have only called law. [34]
Definition
Main article: definition of religion
Scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. There are however two general
definition
systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical.
The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of
qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a western
concern. The attempt as a natural consequence of the western speculative, intellectualistic,
and scientific deposition. It is also the product of the dominant western religious mode, what is
called the Judeo-Christian climate or, more accurately the theistic inheritance from Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. The theistic form of belief in this tradition, even when downgraded
culturally, is formative of the dichotomous western view of religion. That is, the basic structure
of theism is essentially a distinction between a transcendent deity and all else, between the
creator and his creation, between God and Man.
System of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order in men by formulating
conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such as aura of
factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. [45]
Alluding perhaps of Tylor’s “deeper motive”, Geertz remarked that we have very little idea of
how, in empirical terms, this particular miracle is accomplished. We just know that it is done,
annually, weekly, daily, for some people almost hourly; and we have an enormous
ethnographic literature to demonstrate it.
