Religion is an institution or system of beliefs and practices that are based on a supernatural power and are used to influence people’s lives. Sociologists study religion because it plays many important roles in people’s lives, including giving meaning and purpose to life, reinforcing social unity and stability, serving as a form of social control, promoting psychological and physical well-being, and motivating people to work for positive social change. Religion also plays a role in cultural identity and provides a framework for morality and ethics.
The definition of religion has long been controversial. Some scholars use a lexical definition, which simply looks at how the term is normally used in common language. Others define it by examining the nature of the practice or belief at issue, a so-called “substantive” approach. Still others adopt a functional definition, which looks at the distinctive role that a form of life can play in one’s life. Emile Durkheim is perhaps the best known proponent of this type of functional analysis of religion.
These different approaches to defining religion raise several important issues. First, they illustrate that there is no single, unified substantive property that can accurately sort religious forms into their own category. Hence, it is difficult to come up with a definition of religion that will be acceptable to all scholars. This is in sharp contrast to the way that other abstract concepts, such as literature or democracy, are analyzed, which can be classified by a set of defining properties.
Other issues arise from the fact that different scholars use radically different methods to study religion. Some use ethnography, which is the direct observation of a culture, and others use qualitative techniques such as interviews and surveys. These methods can help identify key aspects of religion and its impact on people’s lives, but they are hardly foolproof.
For example, a survey can be misleading if the researcher fails to ask questions that are relevant to the population being studied. Another problem is that researchers can impose their own assumptions on the data, which can bias the conclusions. This is why some scholars have favored a “reflexive turn” in the study of religion, which seeks to examine the assumptions that underlie all studies of religion and to analyze whether those assumptions are valid.
Anthropologists believe that early religion grew out of human curiosity about the unknown and fear of uncontrollable forces, such as weather and death. These concerns were transformed into hope, which included a desire for life after death, a god or goddess who would watch over humanity, and a sense of meaning in life.
Sociologists study religion to understand the functions it serves, the problems it can reinforce and perpetuate, and the ways that it interacts with other components of a culture. The tools and methods that sociologists use include survey research, focus groups, fieldwork, historical analysis, and the interpretation of social and cultural data. By comparing the various perspectives on religion, sociologists can arrive at a more complete picture of this complex phenomenon.