Religion is a socially constructed group of beliefs, traditions, and practices that can include moral teachings and ethical behaviors, mythologies, sacred texts, holy places, and symbols. These practices are often framed by an idea of the supernatural and of spiritual communion with an unseen God. Throughout history, religion has played an important role in shaping people’s lives and societies. As a result, the study of religion has become a major field of academic inquiry, drawing upon methods and approaches from history, philology, literary criticism, sociology, psychology, and anthropology among others.
The concept of religion has come to mean so many different things in different contexts that it is difficult to understand what exactly it is that makes something a religion. In fact, it is so difficult to make sense of the range of practices now said to fall within this category that some people have taken to reject the idea of a thing called “religion” altogether. These critics argue that the modern semantic expansion of the term arose hand in hand with European colonialism and that people should stop treating religion as if it were a real category.
A less radical alternative is to accept the notion that religion is a social taxon, a sortable set of social formations. In this view, the paradigmatic cases of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are each examples of one of these social types. The use of the term is similar to how we might describe a species or an ecosystem, with each instance fitting into one or another of a pre-defined set.
While this approach has its strengths, it has two serious problems. First, it ignores the importance of the cultural dimensions of these practices and fails to recognize that they are not simply beliefs and rituals but also lifestyles, political systems, and even forms of life. Second, it relies on the classical theory of concepts that argues that a thing has an essence that is accurately described by a single property. This view has been criticized as “monothetic” by those who have adopted polythetic methods, which do not impose a threshold number of properties for a practice to be considered a religion.
For these reasons, it is important for anyone interested in religion to seek out resources that go beyond a standard textbook approach to the topic and introduce students to the complexities and nuances of contemporary religious life. Such materials should include detailed, fact-based analysis of current events; descriptions of the wide variety of beliefs and practices currently in existence; and first-person accounts of what it is like to be a member of a particular faith. This will help to provide students with a more nuanced and realistic understanding of the topic, which is necessary for them to fully participate in a multicultural society. The more they know about the diversity of human belief, the more likely they are to respect it and to engage in thoughtful dialogue with people from other religious backgrounds.