A religion is a system of beliefs and practices that a group adopts to give meaning to their lives. Religious people typically believe in a divine creator and have moral and ethical values that they live by. They may also have rituals and a set of texts that they interpret as sacred.
Some scholars have criticized the use of the term religion as it often obscures the role of a group’s power structures in shaping religion. Others have criticized the idea that the term can be understood solely in terms of mental states or subjective experiences. Moreover, the fact that definitions of religion shift according to one’s perspective shows that religion is not an objective reality but something that has been constructed by humans.
Emile Durkheim, a 19th century social scientist, stressed the importance of understanding the function of religious experiences and beliefs. His work continues to influence sociological thinking about religion.
For example, some anthropologists believe that religion is a cultural phenomenon and that it consists of beliefs in spirits and cosmological orders that people create to explain the world and their place within it. Others, such as Edward Burnett Tylor, believe that religion is a human reaction to the realization that death is inevitable and that it offers hope for avoiding that end or, if not, for moving on to a better existence.
Some scholars, like Talcott Smith and Ernest Asad, have called for a change in how we define religion by questioning the assumptions baked into the concept. They argue that narrowing the definition of religion to only include belief in a god or spirit or to only include certain religious beliefs and behaviors excludes many peoples who have no such views and thus distorts our grasp of historical realities.