The Study of Religion
Religion is a complex factor that affects the lives of people around the world. It serves many functions, including providing a sense of purpose and meaning in life, strengthening social unity and stability, promoting psychological and physical well-being, and motivating individuals to work for positive social change.
The concept of religion varies widely across cultures, but some common traits include: the tradition and maintenance of the belief system; the use of myth and symbol; a concept of salvation; sacred places and objects; the community and place of worship; sacred actions and rituals; sacred writings; and, most commonly, a god or group of deities to which believers pray and worship. Some religious groups also have figures of authority who are given godlike status, such as a prophet or leader who conveys messages from the divine.
Religion has long been a force in the development of cultures, shaping knowledge, arts, and technology. It has also provided differing degrees of “social cement” that hold societies together and motivate individuals to act. The study of religion can be done using a variety of social scientific methods, such as surveys, polls, interviews, and analysis of historical data. The term religion can also be used as a filter to examine other components of culture, such as art and music.
Some scholars define religion as a social genus, a family-resemblance concept that encompasses all beliefs and practices that generate or sustain a sense of community. Others believe that the term should be defined functionally, as a set of beliefs and practices that promotes human cohesion or provides orientation in life. If this definition is adopted, then the term can be assessed not as true or false but as a useful category that names an inevitable feature of human culture.
Whether a researcher uses a functional or a stipulative definition of religion, there are two philosophical issues that should be considered. One is that it is difficult to understand the phenomenon of religion without introducing mental states, such as beliefs or feelings. This is a key issue that has been raised in the debate over the nature/cognition divide in the social sciences (Schilbrack 2021).
Other philosophers have taken a different approach to religion, such as the French ethnologists Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) and Marc Bloch (1886-1944), who developed a concept of religious time called the longue duree. This approach suggests that religion is a temporal stratum of culture and that there are certain patterns in the way that religiosity evolves over periods of hundreds to thousands of years. This concept of religion has gained popularity among some scholars because it allows them to use quantitative techniques, such as statistics and archival research, to assess the impact of religion on human civilizations. This method of analyzing religious history has helped to make it a more mainstream field of inquiry. However, some scholars have criticized the longue duree approach because it reduces the significance of cultural differences and focuses on similarities.