The term religion is a general taxon for sets of beliefs and practices that can be found in many cultures. It is a concept that is often analyzed as a monothetic set, in which case it would be easier to define by the number of components that comprise it: faith (fides), worship and devotional practice, belief in supernatural beings and cosmological orders, participation in religious institutions, moral conduct, and explicit metaphysics.
Philosophers have struggled with the question of what exactly the concept religion refers to. Some rely on functional analysis, for example Emile Durkheim who defines it as the social creation that demonstrates the cohesiveness of society. Others, like Paul Tillich who defines it as a dominant concern that organizes values in one’s life, have attempted to use a philosophical approach.
These different approaches are not without problems, however. Stipulative definitions force scholars to accept them and can be problematic, for instance the famous ice-skating example that de Muckadell (2014) uses to criticize a definition of “religion” as being so broad as to include activities that have nothing to do with religion.
Despite these difficulties, some of the main issues that face those who study religion are clear. The first is that the concept of religion is not universal; there are people both in the past and the present who do not believe in disembodied spirits or cosmological orders. The second is that the existence of so many different religions means that it is hard to find a single definition that explains them all.