Religious commitment is central to most people’s lives. It shapes what people value most, and at times is the reason they are willing to live by and die for those values. It is also the primary form in which these valuations are transmitted from generation to generation. Totally secular approaches to public policy, psychotherapy, education, and many other issues overlook the important contribution that religion can make to family life and society.
Most contemporary discussions about religion revolve around the question of whether or not it exists – or can be defined – as an objective, unchanging social phenomenon. Some scholars argue that it does not, and that the concept is a modern invention that went hand in hand with European colonialism. Others take a different approach, and suggest that religion is best understood as an abstract category, a sort of mental construct whose meaning is defined by the way in which it functions.
This perspective is not the same as rejecting the existence of religion – rather, it is an attempt to correct misunderstandings that are baked into our assumptions about what religion names. These misunderstandings are not trivial; they affect how we think about the world and how we go about addressing its problems.
One common mistake is to conflate “religion” with ideas about disembodied spirits or cosmological orders. Although belief in these things is common to most human cultures, there are also many people who don’t believe in them. And, of course, there are ideas about the world and human nature that have no connection to any such beliefs – but which nevertheless function as religions in their own right.