Religion is a complex map of the universe, a worldview and set of beliefs that guide people. It has a profound impact on people’s lives. Religion teaches them how to behave, helps them with moral choices, and creates strong communities that promote fairness and compassion. Many religious practices improve health, learning, economic well-being, self-control, and empathy, and reduce the incidence of social pathologies, such as out-of-wedlock births, crime, drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, and prejudice.
For the vast majority of human history, the combination of myth and ritual we now call Religion was so thoroughly woven into the fabric of culture that most cultures did not even have a word for it. When the word first appeared, in Roman culture, it was religio, meaning “scruples,” the concern that certain activities were important enough to require careful performance.
Scholars have argued that we can better understand Religion by breaking it down into seven dimensions: the practical and ritual; the experiential and emotional; the narrative or mythical; the doctrinal and philosophical; the ethical and legal; the social and institutional; and the material (art, architecture, and sacred places). Ninian Smart developed this model in his famous anatomy of religion (1989), while Catherine Albanese added a fifth dimension, community.
Some scholars have opted for functional definitions, like Durkheim’s, which focuses on the role of Religion in creating social solidarity. Others have taken a more classical approach, as exemplified by Paul Tillich’s axiological definition, which centers on the way in which Religion organizes a person’s values. In either case, the great variety of practices that are now said to belong to the category Religion raises two philosophical issues.