Two Prominent Definitions
Let us now consider two definitions of “religion” that currently enjoy wide favor and that avoid these sorts of shortcomings. The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, a popular reference work, states: “One may clarify the term religion by defining it as a system of beliefs and practices that are relative to superhuman beings.”- This definition encompasses a wide array of cultural phenomena, while at the same time restricting the category, most especially with the concept “superhuman beings.”
Bruce Lincoln (b.
1948), a prominent theorist of religion, asserts in his book Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 that a religion always consists of four “domains”—discourse, practice, community, and institution:1. A discourse whose concerns transcend the human, temporal, and contingent, and that claims for itself a similarly transcendent status....
2. A set of practices whose purpose is to produce a proper world and/or proper human subjects, as defined by a religious discourse to which these practices are connected....
3. A community whose members construct their identity with reference to a religious discourse and its attendant practices....
4. An institution that regulates religious discourse, practices, and community, reproducing them over time and modifying them as necessary, while asserting their eternal validity and transcendent value.7
Lincoln’s definition, though lengthier than the Dictionary’s, is impressively precise. It also is helpfully inclusive. By basing religion on the notion of the “transcendent” rather than on “supernatural beings” or the like, Lincoln’s definition encompasses Confucianism and forms of Buddhism that do not focus on belief in supernatural beings. The religions featured in this textbook conform to Lincoln’s definition. This is not to say that Lincoln, or for that matter any other theorist, has determined what religion “truly” is. In the words of sociologist Peter Berger (1929-2017), commenting on the challenge of defining religion, “a definition is not more or less true, only more or less useful.”- For purposes of our study, Lincoln’s definition provides a useful means of categorizing the subject matter. It clarifies why the traditions featured in this book qualify as religions while also, especially with its insistence that a religion involves an “institution,” establishing helpful limits. The general category “spirituality,” for example, would not necessarily qualify as religion based on Lincoln’s definition.
We now shift our focus from what religions are to consider what religions do. In the next section, we analyze various functions of religion, concentrating especially on the fundamental questions to which religious traditions provide answers.
Self-Assessment 1.1
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