Religion is a system of beliefs and practices that provides believers with a set of sacred values and a belief in a transcendent power. It can also be seen as a way of life that incorporates rituals, moral laws and codes of conduct, and social organizations such as churches and temples. Its followers believe that these sacred values and beliefs will lead to the fulfillment of a divine purpose. Religion is one of the world’s most widespread and enduring human cultural phenomena. While it is difficult to define, most people would agree that some form of religion exists in every culture.
The earliest religious activities, those for which written records exist, appear to have taken shape in Egypt and Mesopotamia. These were polytheistic faiths, which centered on many gods and goddesses. More complex religions have evolved over the centuries, including monotheistic faiths. They have included a central god, angels, and spirits. Myths and legends about the origin of the world and the lives of individual gods and goddesses have become part of these faiths. A code of morals based on these myths and legends is often included in the religion, as well as a belief in the afterlife.
Most scholars of religion have used a functional approach in their studies. Emil Durkheim defined religion as a social phenomenon that serves a function of creating solidarity. Paul Tillich took a similar view in defining it as whatever a person’s dominant concern organizes his or her values.
Other scholars have sought to define religion in a more analytical way. They have sorted it by its properties and looked for the appearance of common characteristics in different religions. Such an analytical approach has become known as a “polythetic” method, because it tries to categorize religions according to their specific properties.
A recurring feature of the most important religions is a belief in a messenger or prophet that carries messages from the gods to their followers. This is true even of the “natural” religions, such as Buddhism, developed by the Buddha (Siddartha Gautama) in the sixth century bce. These messengers are sometimes called gurus or prophets.
Psychoanalyst Carl Jung, in his work on archetypal symbols, interpreted religion as images of the unconscious that resurface in the psyche of humans. He believed that these symbols help people, who are in need of spirituality, in their quest for individuation and can be a source of creative expression.
For some scholars, to think about religion in terms of what people believe is to revert to a Protestant bias and ignore the importance of social structures that produce these beliefs. Others, however, argue that it is not possible to understand religion solely in terms of institutions or disciplinary practices and that it cannot be understood without revisiting hidden mental states. They suggest that the emphasis on structures and agency obscures the fact that a religion is about something that is personal to each person, that it requires beliefs and that these beliefs must be supported by a moral and ethical framework.