Religion is a cultural system of behaviors, practices and ethics that people follow in their efforts to live good lives. They are based on values such as love, forgiveness, peace, moral conduct, spirituality, and participation in religious institutions. Many religions have also sacred histories, narratives and mythologies, which they share with their followers through oral traditions, texts, symbols and holy places. Many of these stories are about how the world came to be as it is, and some attempt to explain human existence and the universe.
Traditionally, scholars have divided the field of study into three categories: those who define religion in terms of beliefs (such as theists), those who define it in terms of practices (such as pluralists) and those who take a functional approach to understanding religion (e.g. Emile Durkheim). In the latter category, religion is seen as whatever system of practices unites a group of people into a moral community. Some scholars of religion have now come to a position of rejecting substantive definitions and instead treating the concept of religion as an umbrella term for the diverse ways that human beings organize their life-worlds.
This’reflexive turn’ has prompted debate as to whether the category of religion is a modern invention. Some argue that religion is a taxonomic construct that people created as they began to create language to categorize their social structures. Others, however, argue that the concept of religion is an innate and pervasive feature of human life-worlds that has existed in some form since prehistoric times, though it may not have been consciously constructed until humans had enough culture to develop a meaningful vocabulary for describing their societies.
