Religion is, in the broadest sense, people’s relation to that which they hold to be holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It also involves the way they deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In some traditions this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms, they may be reflected in a person’s relationship with the broader human community or the natural world.
Most scholars who study religion approach the topic in a broadly phenomenological manner. They consider beliefs, practices, and values, and they examine how these are manifested in ritual, music, drama, and literature and how they interact with each other and with people’s attitudes towards life itself. They also try to understand how this whole range of religious phenomena influences and is influenced by culture, history, and other factors.
The fact that there are no two religions exactly alike has led some to argue that there is no such thing as a “religion” per se, but only a series of culturally defined systems of beliefs and behaviors. Others have argued that there are, indeed, some essential characteristics of religion. They have proposed that there are seven dimensions that distinguish the religious from the secular: the practical and ritual; the experiential and emotional; the narrative or mythical; the doctrinal and philosophical; the ethical and legal; and the social and institutional.
It has also been argued that all religions are based on an underlying principle that all humans have a need to be governed or controlled. They are concerned with a relationship between humanity and its Creator, and they promote right belief and conduct in that relationship. This concern is not just for individuals’ own salvation, but also for the well-being of mankind and of the creation itself.
Another important point is that religions are the source of many of the most enduring and timelessly moving of all human creations: artistic works (art, architecture, and other design), musical and dance forms, poetry, plays, the explorations of the cosmos that issued eventually into the natural sciences, and even some of our most cherished stories and fairy tales. In both their practice and presentation, religions have often been fun and entertaining.
In addition to these phenomenological approaches, there are those who define religion in functional terms. Durkheim, for example, used the term to describe the organized solidarity that arises in certain societies and which is rooted in some sort of belief in disembodied spirits or supernatural orders. More recently, Paul Tillich has emphasized that a religion can be defined as whatever dominant concern serves to organize a person’s values, whether or not that concern involves belief in unusual realities.
The fact that human beings have lived with an awareness of a largely unknown future for all of history has made the need for protection and promotion of proximate and ultimate goals ever more pressing. This need gives rise to religions, which in turn create and protect the means through which these goals can be realized.