Characteristics of Religion
Professor Niniam Smart
author of The World’s Religions: Old
Traditions and Modern
Transformations (Press Syndcate,
University of Cambridge, 1995)
1. The Practical and Ritual Dimension
2. The Experiential and Emotional
Dimension. (the experience of certain
emotions attached to religion e.g.
awe peace etc.)
3. The Narrative or Mythic Dimension
4. The Doctrine and Philosophical
Dimension (the code of beliefs)
5. The Ethical or Legal Dimension
6. The Social and Institutional
Dimension (Church group and
leaders etc)
7. The Material Dimension (actual
buildings, works of art, places of
pilgrimage)
John Hospers
Author of Introduction to Philosophical
Analysis (Routledge, 1956)
1. Beliefs in supernatural beings
2. A distinction between sacred and
profane objects
3. Ritual acts focussed around sacred
objects
4. A moral code believed to be
sanctioned by the Gods
5. Characteristically religious feelings
(awe, sense of mystery, sense of
guilt, adoration etc) which tend to be
aroused in the presence of sacred
objects, and during the practice of
ritual, and which are associated with
the gods.
6. Prayer and other forms of
communication with gods
7. A world view that is, a general picture
of the world as a whole and of the
place of the individual in it, including
a specification of its overall
significance
8. A more or less total organisation of
one’s life based on the world view
9. A social organisation bound together
by the previous characteristics