Religion is a wide range of social and cultural activities that people participate in. They include ceremonies, group activities, beliefs, myths and symbols. They may be used to explain the world (natural or supernatural), and they can provide mechanisms for maintaining psychological and social well being. They can also be the basis of moral/ethical, economic and political reasoning.
Religion has a complex impact on individuals and societies. It can bring people together, but it can also cause conflicts. It can be the source of superstitions that lead to harm to human beings, such as the belief that evil spirits and ghosts cause disease. It can also be used to justify war and violence. It can be used to control people by sanctifying norms and legitimizing institutions. It can also lead to class divisions and oppression.
Scholars have tried to define Religion. Some have emphasized its function, while others have focused on its structure. Most of the attempts to define religion have been “monothetic”, that is, they have assumed that every instance can be accurately described by a defining property. Recently, there has been a movement towards a more “polythetic” definition that allows for the possibility that different cases may share a generic prototype.
One of the most influential books in this shift has been Talal Asad’s Genealogies of Religion (1993). It applies Michel Foucault’s idea that social kinds do not await the development of language to be named and studied, and it argues that the concept of religion as a category is both Christian and modern.