Religion is a belief system that creates meaning and value for people’s lives. It can help bind people together, and it can inspire compassion, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity. Religious faiths also tend to provide a sense of purpose, which can improve mental wellbeing and even lead to longer lifespans.
In the modern world, however, it is hard for many to make sense of religion. Endless philosophies, ideologies and truth claims clamor for attention in our hyper-connected world, while globalization pushes different religions and cultures into contact with each other. People of different beliefs often feel isolated and disconnected from their communities, and the resulting conflict can lead to tension and violence.
Moreover, many scholars believe that the definition of religion that is based on internal states such as moods and motivations is outdated. They argue that one should instead use a functional approach to understanding religion, which emphasizes the roles that religious beliefs and practices play in society.
Emile Durkheim’s 1912 work on religion is an important early example of this approach, in which he defines religion as whatever social function it serves (whether or not it involves belief in unusual realities).
Another influential book on the subject was Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). He uses a similar functional definition, but he focuses on how religion acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of the general order of things and clothing them with such an aura of factuality that they seem uniquely realistic.