A Definition of Religion That Satisfies All Disciplines

Religion

Historically, the term Religion has been used for multifaceted social formations rather than as a monothetic set of practices. In the modern era, it seems avant garde to describe religion as a “constellation”, or “assemblage” of diverse practices, but this is no new idea. Christian theologians, for instance, have long analyzed the anatomy of their faiths as simultaneously fides, fiducia, and fidelitas.

Since the 19th century, when studies of religion emerged as a discipline, it has been difficult to establish a definition that can satisfy everyone in the field. This is because a number of disciplines are enlisted in the study of Religion, including history, philology, literature, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, all with their own methods and topics that may conflict.

The problem is even more acute for a definition of Religion that seeks to find a common ingredient across religions, such as the numinous experience, or the contrast between sacred and profane, or belief in one or more gods. All of these attempts are apt to be challenged by counterexamples or by the simple fact that the element cited is not present in every religion.

In the early 20th century, Emile Durkheim proposed a different approach, dropping the substantive element altogether and defining Religion as whatever systems of beliefs and practices unite a group of people into a moral community (whether or not these systems include any belief in unusual realities). While this approach avoids identifying a specific essence of religion, it still tends to be ethnocentric in its identification of what is universal about the concept.