Religion is a complex phenomenon that spans the entire spectrum of human experience. It consists of all the beliefs, practices, and experiences that shape a person’s worldview, morality, culture, belief system, and approach to certain writings, people, or places. In attempting to categorize these diverse experiences, scholars often adopt one of two strategies: either functional or substantive definitions. The functional approach to religion defines it as the beliefs and practices that create a sense of community or provide orientation in life. It has the merit of avoiding the problem of excluding certain traditions from being called religions because they lack a coherent, communally transmittable body of teachings. Nevertheless, it suffers from the disadvantage that it names an inevitable feature of the human condition rather than explaining what is particularly distinctive about religious practices and beliefs.
Substantive definitions of religion are those that determine membership in a group by the presence of belief in a certain kind of reality. Emile Durkheim, for example, defined religion as whatever systems of practice unite a group into a moral community (whether or not these practices involve belief in unusual realities). It is also possible to define a religion by the role it plays in society and the way in which this role affects a person’s life, an approach favored by Paul Tillich.
This view sees religion as a system of symbols and rituals that communicate to the human mind an order of the universe, life after death, or a divine plan for humanity. Its purpose is to provide a moral framework within which people can live and to promote psychological and physical well-being. This view is also sometimes referred to as the sociobiological perspective because it sees religion as an early and, for millennia, successful protective system.
The symbolic interactionist perspective on religion is different from both the functional and substantive perspectives in that it emphasizes the role of individual interpretation in determining whether or not something constitutes a religious experience. Religious experiences can take many forms: they can include crying, laughing, screaming, trancelike states, a feeling of oneness with other people, and the sensation of being touched by some supernatural force. These experiences can be both transformative and not, but they all have a powerful impact on the way in which people see their world.
The social function of religion is to provide stability, maintain cultural identity and moral standards, and motivate people to work for positive social change. It is not universal, however, as there are groups of people who do not believe in a spiritual afterlife or supernatural beings. Despite its positive aspects, religion also reinforces inequality and can lead to hostility and violence motivated by religious differences. As a result, scholars are currently debating the best ways to understand and explain religion. This debate is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.