Religion is a genus of social formations, the members of which have in common the belief that they embody a distinctive kind of reality. One finds this belief expressed in rituals, moral codes, and cosmological orders that are interpreted by people as the incarnation of God. In addition, one finds religious practices of worship, devotion, ecstasy, and contemplation that are performed scrupulously and fervently. It is these latter features that make religion a source of power and an obstacle to peace in the world.
Many scholars have offered “monothetic” definitions of religion, which operate on the classical assumption that any instance of a concept will share a defining property that puts it in the category. The most well-known of these is Emile Durkheim’s functional definition, which defines religion as whatever beliefs and practices serve the social function of creating solidarity (whether or not those beliefs involve the notion of unusual realities).
Other scholars have developed “polythetic” approaches that drop the requirement for a defining property. Among these are the views of Charles Lincoln, who suggests that a religion must have at least four features: (1) a sense of transcendent order; (2) a set of social practices; (3) a system of values; and (4) a culture-specific form of life. The study of religion has emerged as a discipline whose practitioners bring together the disciplines of history, philology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology. While there is no consensus about how to define a religion, there is agreement that it is a cultural phenomenon that must be studied.