Religion is an important part of people’s lives. It provides a sense of meaning and purpose, gives people a way to deal with death and the afterlife, helps them make sense of their lives and the world around them, and serves as a social glue.
People often think of religion as a collection of beliefs about the universe, but it is actually much more than that. It includes everything from the tiniest beads to the most complex systems of organized worship and rituals. It may involve sacred books, a hierarchy of leaders, a special set of days or symbols that are holy, a belief in miracles, and even a belief that the spirits or souls of dead people can be saved in one form or another.
Sociologists recognize that religion is a universal aspect of human culture. It is a group of patterned behaviors and values that are based on the basic needs and values of a society or community. For example, funeral rites are common to all societies. These are the types of rituals that illustrate the concept of religion as a social institution, as defined by such sociologists as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx.
In the past, most attempts to analyze religion have been “monothetic” in that they operated on the classical view that every instance of something will have some defining property that places it in a particular category. However, over the last several decades, there has been a growing trend towards polythetic approaches that move away from this view and treat religion as a multifaceted complex.