KLAUS HOCK: WHAT IS RELIGION?
CHAPTER 2 FROM EINFÜHRUNG
2002. 1
IN DIE
RELIGIONSWISSENSCHAFT; WBG, DARMSTADT
Enquiring about the concept of religion leads us directly into the heart of religious studies and
at the same time into one of its most relevant internal debates, which will hardly be resolved in
the foreseeable future – and probably cannot be resolved at all. Almost every introduction
makes reference to psychologist James Leuba, noted for his contributions to the psychology of
religion, who, at the beginning of the last century, compiled nearly 50 different definitions of
the term “religion.” Of course, he discarded them all and offered his own definition as an
alternative instead. In the meantime, the attempts to define “religion” have grown to a vast
number, and just to list them all would go beyond the scope of this small volume. Moreover, it
would not be very helpful to add yet another definition of the term “religion” to the many
existing ones and to present a detailed and long-winded justification for the choice of this
concept. In the following, we will merely address some of the fundamental questions
concerning the usage of the term “religion” in order to offer guidance in the maze of definitions
of “religion”.
One of the problems with defining the concept of religion lies in the fact that the concept itself
emerged in a very specific cultural and historical environment – it belongs predominantly to
the occidental history of ideas. It is when we try to apply the concept of religion as a universal
concept to phenomena in other historical and cultural contexts, if not before, that we meet with
unexpected difficulties.
Definitions of the term religio
However, already the concept “religion” itself is not used consistently, and even its
terminological derivation is contested. To start with, the Latin religio, on which the term is
based, denotes “considerate action” or “conscientious observing.” Although, for the Romans,
the word religio contained principally the aspect of ritual exactitude, the concept can be further
developed in different directions.
Cicero (106-43 BC) defines religio in his treatise De natura deorum (“On the Nature of the
Gods”) as cultus deorum, i.e., as “cult of the gods,” as “care” or “worship” of the gods, with
the correct ritual behaviour being paramount. As the antithesis, as it were, to neglegere, “to
neglect,” relegere, “to consider carefully,” in turn refers to the correct course of action at a
divine service, or more precisely: at the “service for the gods.” Cicero thus expresses the Roman
understanding of “religion” according to which religion is not so much about proper faith, but
rather about correctly performing the actions directed at the gods – hence, Roman religion was
distinguished not by orthodoxy, but by orthopractice.
Lactantius, a 6th century AD Christian writer and orator, however, refers to a different meaning:
He derives religio from religare – to bind, bind again, reattach, bring back. Later, the great
Christian theologian Augustine (354-430) adopts this definition and describes the religio vera,
the “true religion,” as one that is intent on reconciling or “reattaching” the soul – which has
been separated from God, or has torn itself away from him – with God.
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Translated from German by CSS, ETH Zurich (2014).
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Recently, a third version has been put forward to derive religio from rem ligare, “to tie up the
matter” – in the sense of “letting the frenzy of activity rest.”
The debate about the appropriate derivation of the term religio reveals that the definition of the
concept of religion is impossible in terms of an objective, “factual” definition, but rather
remains linked to a specific historical and cultural context.
The change of the concept of religion in the occidental history of ideas
However, several indicators suggest that the concept of religio was derived from the cultus
deorum in the sense of “correct action:” thus, the antithesis to religio, superstitio, does not
relate to wrong belief (later: “superstition”), but rather to wrong action – wrong in the sense of
an incorrect or even exaggerated action, executed without legitimization or authorization. This
derivation is further supported by the fact that – despite Augustine’s theological shift of
emphasis of the understanding of religio – the aspect of orthopractice was initially retained in
Christianity: Religiosi refers to monks and nuns, i.e., religious people, and the status religionis
is primarily expressed as correct cultic practice, status perfectionis, and not as that which is
believed.
In the age of the Reformation, a far-reaching change of emphasis in the usage of the term religio
occurs: On the one hand, the humanists begin to correlate religio increasingly with what in the
vernacular is called “common Christian faith,” or “creed.” With the Reformation, “religion”
turns into a concept that exercises a critical function – against “superstition” and “magic,” but
also against the ritual practice of the Roman-Catholic Church in its religious services, which,
in the eyes of the reformers, was wrongful. On the other hand, a tendency to universalize the
concept of religion sets in, which would gradually reach its breakthrough during the
Enlightenment: First of all, at the conceptual level, “religion” is perceived as being located
behind the multiplicity of individual religions; and at the lexical level, as being situated above
them – as seen, for instance, in David Hume’s (1711-1776) understanding of religion as “natural
religion.”
The generalization of the concept of religion in the Enlightenment
This development continues in the late Enlightenment. Religion appears as an ideal whole that
is only present in religions in a truncated and deficient form. Thus, the concept of religion enters
into a relationship of twofold tension with the actual religions: On the one hand, as religious
criticism, it is directed at specific historical manifestations of existing religions, by declaring
religion as such to be the Archimedean point from which criticism of the concrete forms of
religion may be formulated. On the other hand, religion as such eludes this religious criticism,
remaining intangible in its amorphous form. This twofold relationship of tension between
religion and religions reflects the persistent ambivalence of the enlightened concept of religion,
which claims to incorporate religious criticism as well as the establishment of a religion. The
so-called “ring parable” in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (1729-1781) play “Nathan the Wise”
is a particularly apt example for this: On the one hand, the specific religions – in this case:
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – are subjected to a critique, which is directed mainly against
their respective claims of supremacy and attempts at appropriation. On the other hand, this
critique is based on the notion of a singular, true religion per se, which will enable humanity’s
future and life, even its survival.
The concept of religion as employed in religious criticism and in the establishment of
religion
The above-mentioned relationship of twofold tension between the concept of religion and
actual religions has repeatedly led to the justification of a criticism of Christianity in the 19th
and 20th centuries – especially concerning the application of the universal term “religion” to the
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history of Christianity – as well as to a corroboration of the Christian claim to exclusivity: On
the one hand, the universal concept of religion fundamentally denies Christianity’s claim to a
supernatural, seemingly “absolute” position beyond history, and presents the Christian religion
as being situated on the same level as all other concrete religions and within the scope of the
same world history. On the other hand, historical evolutionism – in combination with the
acceptance of “religion” as a universal concept in singular form – has resulted in a new way of
justifying Christianity’s claim to exclusivity: based on the assumption that “the one religion”
experienced a linear developmental process, thus striving towards its realization in the world.
Naturally, Christianity – as the most civilized and sophisticated form of religion – was assumed
to approximate this ideal more closely than any other of humankind’s religions.
Since the Enlightenment, then, we have been grappling with the problem that the concept of
religion – as a concept rooted in the occidental history of ideas – on the one hand owes its
origins and the substance of its norms to the specific historical and cultural context of Europe.
On the other hand, as a universal concept, it claims to denote something – even in different
historical and cultural settings – that corresponds to what it refers to in the (“Christian”)
occident.
Ancient Greece had no equivalent to the modern concept of religion
But the matter is even more complicated. Not only do other cultures lack a direct equivalent to
the concept of “religion,” but so do other historical eras. Even in ancient Greece, the cradle of
occidental culture, there was no term that corresponded to our concept of religion: Eusébeia
signifies reverence and awe, but it is not only applied to the gods but also to people – admirable
characters – or things – proven values and standards; latreía may also refer to a religious
service, but its initial meaning is simply and mundanely the provision of services; and thréskeía
describes a concrete event in the sense of observing a commandment. While there is a certain
overlap between these notions and our concept of religion, the meaning of the Greek terms far
surpasses what we would denote as “religion.” Thus, our concept of religion excludes important
aspects, which, according to the Greek understanding, cannot be separated – at least
conceptually – from “religion.” It is therefore too narrow to comprise all the areas captured by
the Greek expressions.
The issue does not become any easier once we start looking for terminological counterparts to
our concept of religion in the cultural contexts outside of the Western world.
Religion as dîn?
In the Islamic context, the Arabic dîn is one such expression. This concept is derived form the
Semitic root dâna, which roughly translates as to pay a due – namely that which is owed (to
God) – and thus contains completely different connotations than our concept of religion. Thus,
the Quran talks, for instance, about the yawm ad-dîn – the “day of judgment.” In Arabic usage,
dîn (plural: adyân) may indeed refer to a religion, or religions according to our understanding
of the word. At the same time, dîn describes more than merely “religion,” namely a way of life
or customs (characterized by law and order).
Religion as dharma ?
In Indian culture, the issue is a different one yet again. Here, the corresponding concept is the
Sanskrit dharma, which is derived from the root dhr, meaning “to carry,” or “to hold.”
Dharma covers an extraordinary range of meanings and connotations. The spectrum ranges
from mythical beliefs according to which the gods “hold the cosmos together,” via the idea of
a cosmic ordering principle or concept of dharma as “law,” to the term for the traditional Hindu
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caste system – a usage of the concept that emphasizes the aspects of a ritual and social order
system.
In the traditions of Buddhism, in turn, the concept – in Pali: dhamma – is used to refer to the
teaching of Buddha, sometimes also to the so-called “Eightfold Path” as the manifestation of
this teaching. This directly reflects the Buddhist understanding that the Buddha did not
announce metaphysical truths or “religious” dogmas, but that his teaching merely expresses the
order of things – the dharma – as it really is. Dharma may also denote the teaching system of
other teachers – or even the teachings and the “law” of other religions. But this is not all:
Dharma describes the practical implementation of the teaching, or the world order, in the sense
of its realization towards nirvana – which in turn may used synonymously to dharma; dharma
may also refer to an ethical category as well as to proper conduct; finally, it is used as an
ontological category, i.e., pertaining to the understanding of its being, in order to describe those
parameters on which, according to Buddhist belief, the existence of things depends. Again, it
becomes apparent that there is only a relatively small conceptual overlap between our concept
of religion and the wide range of meanings of dharma.
Religion as dao ?
The problem persists if we correlate our concept of religion with additional notions: If we select
from the East Asian context the concept of dao – as a “path” or “principle” that is the basis of
all reality –, again totally new perspectives on the issue we signify as “religion” open up. Dao
has, in this respect, on the one hand a more specific, and on the other a more general meaning
than “religion.” It denotes the order of the world as a whole; at the same time, however, it
describes the harmony of contradictory, yet related and mutually dependent principles. If we
try to pin down the variety of Chinese religions with an umbrella term – by using the term bai
shen, which translates roughly as “worship of the gods” –, we are again treading common
ground, which on the one hand comes close to our understanding of religion, but on the other
hand takes into account merely one aspect of “religion” in the Chinese context.
In the case of African or Pacific religions, there seems to be no conceptual basis at all for us to
stand on; we generally fail to identify anything that stands out as a clearly distinguishable
subarea of “religion” in the overall context of culture. No wonder that, in former times,
travellers and ethnographers who were confronted with these cultures either came to the
conclusion that there was no religion to be found at all, or that everything was religion.
The concept of religion between universal validity and cultural embeddedness
No matter what we attempt: Our term “religion” is either too narrow or too broad to grasp what
other religious or cultural traditions describe with the terms that seem to correspond to our
concept of religion. In addition, these terms also carry subliminal meanings, which do not
directly align with what we have in mind when we think of “religion.” The question must be:
Is there some kind of lowest common denominator to be found in the multiplicity of religions
that can be justifiably represented by the universal term “religion”? Or does the usage of a
general concept of religion prevent an adequate understanding of the respective individual
“religions”, since we tend to reduce our perceptions of other religions to what corresponds to
our understanding of “religion”? There are by all means good reasons to take this objection
seriously. Irrespective of how we answer these questions, the fundamental problem persists:
There remains an ultimately unresolvable tension that springs from the fact that our concept of
religion continues, on the one hand, to be bound to the historical and cultural context of the
Western world; on the other hand, as a universal concept, it claims to encapsulate appropriately
the corresponding phenomena from outside this historical and cultural context from which it
originated.
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This problem might be solved if we succeeded in identifying what is common to all religions
and to conceptually define it as “religion.” Efforts to this end so far chiefly go in two directions:
On the one hand, there are attempts to search for this common aspect in certain contents, or in
a shared “substance” (substantialist, occasionally also substantial understanding); some
religious scientists even hope to thus detect the “nature” or the “essence” of religion that is at
the core of all individual religions. One might also attempt to enquire as to the accomplishments
of the different religions – irrespective of their differing teachings; which structures – beyond
their specific, particular subject-matters and substantial elements – they have in common; what
their functions are (functional understanding, which is also the basis of the functionalist
approach, but should be distinguished in terminology).
Substantialist understanding of religion
Concerning the substantialist understanding of “religion,” the aspects that appear to constitute
the lowest common denominator of religions are defined narrowly or broadly to varying
degrees.
Considering that the concept of religion emanates from the occidental history of ideas and
culture, it is hardly surprising that “God” often features as a constituting fundamental element
of such definitions – sometimes very specifically, sometimes also in the guide of an abstract
term (“deity”) or in the plural (“gods”).
Thus, Günter Lanczkowski defined religion as an “underivable archetypal phenomenon, a
quantity sui generis, which is constituted through the existential interrelation of mankind and
God on the one hand, … and on the other through the reactions of man, his ‘direction toward
the absolute’” (12: 33f.). By referencing the archetypal phenomenon as well as the nonderivability and distinctiveness of religion as a manifestation in its own right – sui generis –,
Lanczkowski defines religion as something that is common to all humankind and consists of
an individual existential encounter with God and the human reaction to it. God thus becomes a
constitutive element of religion; without God, there can be no religion.
Religion as belief in “supreme beings”
Lanczkowski is not the only proponent of such a definition of religion. One of the “classical”
definitions of “religion” in the context of an earlier theory of religion – formulated within the
scope of cultural anthropology and still strongly informed by evolutionism – can be seen as the
precursor of this definition: Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) defined religion as “the belief
in spiritual beings” (133: 383f.). This definition differs from Lanczkowski’s solely in that Tylor
supposes an early stage of humanity’s religious development to have consisted in the belief in
spirits, which was later replaced by the belief in many gods (polytheism) or one god
(monotheism), respectively. As a universal term for gods (singular or plural), spirits, or other
supreme beings, he uses the term “spiritual beings.” Cultural anthropologist Melford E. Spiro
also follows in this tradition by defining religion as “an institution consisting of culturally
patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings” (quoted in 23: 21). Günther
Kehrer, who supports this understanding of religion, rightly remarks that “all substantial
definitions of religion in one or the other way lead to the stipulation that religion is the belief
in supernatural beings and are thus ultimately modifications of the Tylorian definitions” (ibid:
23).
Such definitions of religion have repeatedly been met with the objection that not all religions
recognise a god, or gods, or “supernatural beings,” usually citing early Buddhism. Other
substantialist definitions of religion try to circumvent this difficulty by identifying more
abstract basic concepts as the substance or object of religion.
Holiness and transcendental experience
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The concept of “the holy” or “holiness” has taken this place, especially in the tradition of
classical religious phenomenology. Nathan Söderblom has explicitly stated that religion is
possible even “without a specific notion of a deity,” and concludes: “Holiness is the defining
expression in religion” (my emphasis, K.H.; quoted in 73: 76). At the same time, Rudolf Otto
in his book with the same name defines The Holy as the basic category with which “religion”
may be grasped. This tradition has been frequently adopted and developed further: For Gustav
Mensching, “religion is the experiential encounter of man with the reality of the holy, and man’s
responsive action as informed by holiness” (37: 15); and Mircea Eliade – while claiming to be
exempt from the responsibility of having to define “religion” thanks to his methodology of
classifying religious phenomena by morphology – nevertheless refers to the category of
holiness, which, according to him, reveals itself in the way the various manifestations of the
holy are formed – in the “modality” of different “hierophanies” (76: 31f. et passim). Other
substantialist definitions of religion are even more abstract and define transcendence, or the
transcendental experience, respectively, as the basic fact of religion. However, it is doubtful
whether the problem that all substantialist definitions of religion share can thus be really
resolved: namely, that a substantial definition of the concept of religion excludes certain
“religions.” To what extent “transcendence” or a “transcendental experience” are constituent
elements in early Buddhism, or Confucianism, or Daoism remains debatable.
Functional understanding of religion
Those definitions that manage to do without substantial characterizations of religion seem to
avoid these difficulties. They do not ask what religion is, but what it does, or causes, i.e., what
it achieves and which functions it fulfills. This is based on the assumption that religion responds
to general and fundamental human problems that “technically” cannot be solved – basic needs,
the search for meaning, existential crises, etc. –, and that its achievement lies in offering
“solutions” to these problems. Accordingly, religion is part of the humanity of mankind. It is
questionable, however, whether such problems occur “in and of themselves”, i.e., irrespective
of their cultural environment; should this not be the case, one would have to determine the
achievement of religion in quite different ways, depending on the cultural context; and we
would suddenly have to deal with a multitude of functional definitions of religion.
Social integration
Another equally important question concerns the accomplishment of religion with regard to the
totality of culture: In the light of “classical” functionalist models – as outlined primarily by
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1917), the main proponent of ethnological functionalism, and by
sociologist and religious thinker Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) – the main function of religion
consists in the integration of society. This usually includes a model of culture based on
harmony: Culture, it is assumed, “functions” in an ideal way if the different sections it
comprises (sciences, economics, law, religion, …) complement each other harmoniously and
are perfectly attuned to each other. The particular purpose of religion in this context would
consist of integrating people into society, thus ensuring a harmonious operation of society. But
is this really the case? Do not numerous examples – many of them from recent religious history
– prove that religions may also have a disintegrating function and, in this form, may even have
a destabilizing effect?
Orientation and giving meaning
Even functional definitions of religion have their limits: The more specifically they relate to
certain cultures, the more diverse the answers will be to the question what religion is. Similarly
to substantialist definitions of religion, functional definitions of religion tend to be more general
if the achievements of “religion” are determined in a more abstract way. A particularly high
level of abstraction is exemplified in the religious theory of Niklas Luhmann, a sociologist of
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religion (d. 1998), who defined the achievement of religion approximately as follows: The
world is contingent – i.e., it is randomly the way it is, but it could also be different; faced with
this situation of uncertainty and indetermination, religion translates the indeterminable into
something determinable by reducing its complexity: It selects from the infinity of possibilities
and thus creates “meaning.” The particular achievement of religion hence consists of its
orientating function. Religion is a practice of coping with contingency through the reduction of
complexity.
Due to its high level of abstraction, Luhmann’s definition of religion can be fairly easily applied
to different concrete forms of religion. But the functional definitions of religion proposed by
Luhmann and others have been subjected to criticism from many sides: It is argued that they
completely ignore the specific content and thus the “internal view” of religion; that they reduce
religion to merely non-religious aspects; and that their enquiry as to the achievement or the
function of religion makes religious and non-religious elements completely interchangeable.
Aporiae of substantialist and functional definitions of religion
Both substantialist and functional definitions of religion reveal a series of obvious problems,
which clearly show that an unambiguous definition of “religion” is still far off.
Faced with the limits and shortcomings of both approaches, “a combination of the functional
and the substantial method” has been suggested in order to advance incrementally towards a
definition of religion, and to compensate for the respective weaknesses of the functionalist
definitions with the strengths of the substantialist ones, and vice versa: “The exterior aspect of
religion has been taken into account by connecting the religious contents and forms with the
problems of social and individual constitution of meaning; the interior aspect of religion, in
turn, by considering its relation to transcendence and the forms of exemplification of
transcendence” (186: 190). But even such a combination of functional and substantialist
definitions of “religion” will, in the long run, probably not provide us with a universal,
ahistorical concept of religion that encompasses all religions.
A definition of religion that originates from the occidental “Christian” context will probably,
to begin with, follow the concept of religion it is familiar with from its own cultural history. As
religious studies scholar Fritz Stolz of Zurich has stated, “experiences with Christianity,
Judaism, Islam and antiquity [fuse into] … a ‘prototypical’ image of religion … From this
prototypically aligned starting point a substantialist approach suggests itself, looking for the
‘substantial’ element of religion in certain contents. However, this approach becomes more and
more problematic as the distance to the cultural and historical environment of the prototype
increases” (15: 34).
Furthermore, even in the context of substantialist definitions of religion, it is impossible to
delineate with accuracy what “religion” is and what it is not. Religion as a cultural phenomenon
is conflated with other areas of culture – economics, law, art, political or social order, etc. – in
a way that it cannot be viewed as an independent event, but only in its interwoven correlation:
as a part of economics (e.g., the prohibition against work on Sundays), as a part of law (e.g.,
the Islamic personal statute law), as part of art (e.g., a painting with religious motifs), as part of
a social or political order (e.g., a coronation ceremony) … Religion cannot be defined in terms
of unequivocal contents, it cannot be grasped in its “essence.”
Religion as “open” concept
It is therefore indeed tempting to give up on a definition of the concept of religion, as suggested,
for instance, by the scholar of religion Hans Kippenberg of Bremen. This corresponds with a
tendency also observed among other religious studies scholars to leave the question open, or to
define religion as an “open concept” (18: 33). Giving up on defining the concept of religion,
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however, poses new problems: If “religion” really cannot be defined – would one then not also
have to renounce religious studies altogether as an independent discipline and amalgamate it
with its sub-disciplines – from philological studies, sociology, ethnology, and psychology all
the way to oriental studies and other cultural studies disciplines – or instead allow it be
subsumed by a larger entity – theology or philosophy? If the scholarly independence of
religious studies as a scientific discipline is to be maintained, a definition of religion is required;
perhaps not a narrow one, but at least an approximate one.
Religion as a system of orientation
Indeed, attempts to do so have been undertaken and continue to be undertaken from different
angles. Frequently, proposals made in this respect endeavor to mediate between the functional
and the substantialist understandings of religion. Jacques Waardenburg, for instance, defines
“religion on an abstract level mainly as orientation, and religions as a sort of systems of
orientation” (ibid: 34). This approach has two advantages: On the one hand, the concept of
religion is not defined too narrowly, but left open, allowing even those systems of orientation
to be considered that do not classify themselves as religious, but on closer inspection do exhibit
elements of religion; on the other hand, the concept of religion is not expanded arbitrarily, but
describes related phenomena that share certain characteristics. Waardenburg himself mentions
elements such as “special experiences or patterns of behavior that refer to religious powers and
circumstances that are believed to form the basis of life and the world …, standards and values
held to be universal …, certain meaningful points of reference that are transcendentally,
unconditionally, even absolutely valid …” (ibid.: 34f.). He believes the religious function of
these systems of orientation consists of the fact that “their meaningfulness is actually accepted
as objective and absolute” (ibid: 35). With this functional definition, it becomes possible to
observe the change of “systems of orientation” from religions to “purely social systems” on the
one hand, and on the other to analyze the “religious” impact of non-religious systems of
orientation with the methods of comparative religious studies.
Dimensions of religion
Various other thinkers have tried to identify criteria that define more closely what is signified
by “religion” without restricting the concept to a narrow definition. These include, among
others, the approach developed by Charles Glock and Rodney Stark, which describes different
“dimensions” of religiousness: the ideological dimension, the ritualistic dimension, the
experiential dimension, the intellectual dimension, and the dimension of practical action. Glock
himself later narrowed down the five dimensions he initially proposed to four; others, however,
have identified more than five dimensions. For instance, in his definitive work about human
religious experience, British religious studies scholar Ninian Smart (d. 2001) distinguishes the
ritual, the mythological, the didactic, the ethical, the social and the experiential dimensions.
Ursula Boos-Nünning, in turn, adds a sixth to Glock and Stark’s five dimensions – bonding
with the congregation – but summarizes various other dimensions in a superordinate category
“general religiousness.”
These examples demonstrate that the effort to define various dimensions or components of
“religion” also remains highly disparate, even contradictory. Nevertheless, this attempt at
identifying a series of factors that shed further light on the semantic field of “religion” shows
us two things:
Complexity and plurality of the definition of “religion”
Firstly, the “customary” definitions of “religion” are mainly notable for defining their subject
in a “one-dimensional” way. Out of a multitude of factors, one particular aspect is selected and
elevated to serve as the foundation of the respective definition of religion. Accordingly, religion
emerges as “faith,” as “experience,” as “ethics,” as “system of thought,” as (ritual) “action,”
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etc. Such a procedure thus reduces “religion” to one particular aspect, but at the same time – in
order to keep the definition universal – must lift the concept to a level of abstraction where the
concrete, lived religion becomes almost unrecognizable behind the abstract definition. At the
same time, the definition thus obtained reveals a lot about those who have crafted it; indeed, it
says more about the positions and preference of the researchers than about religion itself.
This observation leads to a second statement: “Religion” encompasses a whole “family” of
components. Hence, the concept of religion has to refer to a collection of different factors,
criteria, and dimensions, which – taken together – depict a framework into which religious
science can inscribe its subject-matter. This framework, however, is not “objectively given,”
but is “constructed” by the activity of scholars in religious studies: It is they, the researchers,
who create an ideal-type grid from associated elements and forms of expression, thus defining
what may count as “religion.”
Religion as scientific “construct”
What, then, is “religion”? First of all, it is a scientific construct that comprises a whole bundle
of functional and substantial definitions; a construct that allows associated elements and forms
of expression to be captured in a grid as the subject-matter of research in religious studies (and
other disciplines) – as “religion.” These include, among others, aspects of ethics and social
action (norms and values, patterns of behavior, ways of life), ritual dimensions (cultic and other
symbolic actions), cognitive and intellectual dimension (teaching and belief systems,
mythologies, cosmologies, etc.; in other words, the entire “religious” knowledge), sociopolitical and institutional dimensions (forms of organization, law, religious expertise, etc.),
symbolic-sensible dimensions (signs and symbols, religious art, music, etc.), and experiential
dimensions (experiences of vocation and revelatory experiences, sentiments of mystical
oneness, experiences of healing and salvation, experiences of community and dissolution of
self…).
By using these terms, a conclusive definition of “religion” is avoided, and the concept of
religion remains deliberately open – in accordance with Waardenburg’s approach. Thus, the
question of whether a substantialist or a functionalist understanding of religion is preferable
matters less, especially as there is still leeway for arbitration between the two approaches. At
the same time, the focus shifts towards the scholars themselves, whose “constructing” activity
accentuates the individual dimensions of the subject-matter of religious studies in different
ways, and accordingly emphasizes different features in their definition of “religion.” In
religious studies, however, there is a broad consensus that the understanding of “religion” from
a scientific viewpoint may not be “religious” itself, and that a strict distinction must be made
between religious discourse – religious statements, actors, symbols and categories, etc. – and
scholarly constructs in religious studies, i.e., the definition of associated elements and forms of
expressions using a grid of formal conceptualization on the level of a “meta-language,” a
scientific terminology removed from religious speech.
The reality of religion
At this point, however, we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The
observation that the concept of religion is a scientific construct does not mean that we are
dealing with mere fiction, lacking an equivalent in reality. Rather, “religion” is not only
reflected in our everyday language, but is also receives attention from law and legislation as a
given fact. Religion is more than smoke and mirrors – it is a social reality, a specific process of
communication, which creates realities and takes shape itself through social actions. However,
we still have to be aware of the fact that “religion” is currently subject to rapid change and farreaching alterations, concerning its definitions as well as its functions. Concepts such as
political religion, sports as religion, religion in popular culture, religion and media, new
religiousness, new age, etc. are just some of the keywords that indicate such a change. These
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upheavals could force us to search for a new concept of religion that adequately reflects the
changed conditions.
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