The word religion did not exist in the ancient world as a category of human experience, yet today it is used to describe nearly every spiritual tradition on Earth. This modern concept was invented in the 16th century to distinguish the domain of the church from the domain of civil authorities, a separation that did not exist for most of human history. Before the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the Latin term religio referred to conscientiousness, moral obligation, or duty to anything, including family, neighbors, and rulers, rather than a specific set of beliefs about the divine. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder used the term to describe the apparent respect given by elephants to the night sky, while Cicero derived it from the verb religare, meaning to bind or connect, or alternatively to re-legere, meaning to read again or consider carefully. The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious and worldly things were separated, was not used before the 1500s, and the very idea that one could have a religion in the modern sense was unknown to ancient Jews, Greeks, or Romans. The term religion emerged in English around the 1200s to mean life bound by monastic vows, but it was only during the Protestant Reformation and the Age of Exploration that scholars began to apply this label to diverse global practices that had no equivalent word in their own languages. No one self-identified as a Hindu or Buddhist or other similar terms before the 1800s, and the concept of ancient religion is a modern interpretation of practices that ancient cultures simply called law or tradition. The invention of religion as a universal category was a Western construct that was then applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures, creating a false equivalence between Abrahamic faiths and indigenous traditions that had never seen themselves as religions in the same way. The etymological roots of the word reveal a history of shifting meanings, from a Roman virtue of conscientiousness to a modern system of belief, showing that the very category we use to understand human spirituality is a relatively recent historical invention.
The Search for a Definition
Scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion, with some giving up on the possibility of a definition altogether, yet the search continues to shape how we understand human culture. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a cultural system, while the theologian Antoine Vergote took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency. The sociologist Émile Durkheim defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, which he meant to be things set apart and forbidden, creating a moral community called a Church. The psychologist William James defined religion as the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. These definitions vary so widely that they include everything from the belief in spiritual beings to the feeling of absolute dependence, from the worship of gods to the veneration of a rock, a tree, or a spring. The term myth has several meanings, serving as a traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people, or as a metaphor for the spiritual potentiality in the human being. Joseph Campbell remarked that mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as misinterpreted mythology, highlighting the subjective nature of these labels. The study of religion comprises a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and social scientific studies, each offering different theories about its origins and workings. Some scholars argue that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings. The cognitive science of religion seeks to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, practices, and schemas by means of ordinary cognitive capacities, while other theories focus on the psycho-analytic approach of Sigmund Freud or the sociological theories of Max Weber. The debate over what constitutes religion remains an essentially contested concept, with no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion, leaving the field open to interpretation and redefinition by each new generation of scholars.
Four religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, account for over 77% of the world's population, and 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as nonreligious, meaning that the vast majority of remaining religions account for only 8% of the population combined. Christianity is the world's largest religion, with about 2.3 billion followers as of 2015, based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in the 1st century, and it is the religion of the Byzantine Empire in the first millennium and of Western Europe during the time of colonization. Islam is the most widely practiced religion of Southeast Asia, North Africa, Western Asia, and Central Asia, with about 1.8 billion followers, and it is a monotheistic religion based on the Quran, one of the holy books considered by Muslims to be revealed by God, and on the teachings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Hinduism is one of the most ancient of still-active religious belief systems, with origins perhaps as far back as prehistoric times, and it is variously defined as a religion, set of religious beliefs and practices, or religious tradition, with major deities including Vishnu, Lakshmi, Shiva, Parvati, Brahma, and Saraswati. Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama in the 5th century BCE, and Buddhists generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their suffering by understanding the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth. These four faiths have shaped the political, cultural, and social landscapes of the world, with Christianity propagated throughout the world via missionary work, Islam spreading through trade and conquest, Hinduism and Buddhism influencing the spiritual life of Asia, and all four having significant impacts on global demographics and history. The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists, and agnostics, although many in the demographic still have various religious beliefs, and scholars have indicated that global religiosity may be increasing due to religious countries having generally higher birth rates. The five largest religious groups by world population, estimated to account for 5.8 billion people and 84% of the population, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and traditional folk religions, with a global poll in 2012 surveying 57 countries and reporting that 59% of the world's population identified as religious, 23% as not religious, 13% as convinced atheists, and also a 9% decrease in identification as religious when compared to the 2005 average from 39 countries.
The Origins of Belief
The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams, and many of the great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort, as the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the imaginations of people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs. Anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just state that it seems apparent that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human life that are significant, persistent, and intolerable, and one important way in which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune. The development of religion has taken different forms in different cultures, with some religions placing an emphasis on belief, while others emphasize practice, and some religions focusing on the subjective experience of the religious individual, while others consider the activities of the religious community to be most important. The key to long-term success, and many movements come and go with little long-term effect, has relatively little to do with the prophets, who appear with surprising regularity, but more to do with the development of a group of supporters who are able to institutionalize the movement. Hallucinations and delusions related to religious content occurs in about 60% of people with schizophrenia, and while this number varies across cultures, this had led to theories about a number of influential religious phenomena and possible relation to psychotic disorders, with religious content also common in temporal lobe epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Theories about religion offer various explanations for its origins and workings, including the ontological foundations of religious being and belief, and the study of the phenomenon of religion includes disciplines such as theology, comparative religion, history of religion, evolutionary origin of religions, anthropology of religion, psychology of religion, law and religion, and sociology of religion. The origin of religion is uncertain, and there are a number of theories regarding the subsequent origins of religious practices, with some scholars arguing that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings. The study of religion and morality can be contentious due to ethnocentric views on morality, failure to distinguish between in group and out group altruism, and inconsistent definitions of religiosity, yet the search for the origins of belief continues to drive academic inquiry and public debate.
The Power of Rituals
Religious practice may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration of a deity, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, or public service, and some religions practice animal sacrifice, the ritual killing and offering of an animal to appease or maintain favour with a deity, which has been banned in India. The practices of a religion may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration of a deity, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, religious music, religious art, sacred dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture, and the study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980. Common topics of interest include marriage and the family, and human rights, and scholars have explored themes in Western history regarding Christianity and justice and mercy, rule and equity, and discipline and love. The study of religion and morality can be contentious due to ethnocentric views on morality, failure to distinguish between in group and out group altruism, and inconsistent definitions of religiosity, yet the study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena.
The Politics of Faith
Religion has had a significant impact on the political system in many countries, with most Muslim-majority countries adopting various aspects of sharia, the Islamic law, and some countries even defining themselves in religious terms, such as The Islamic Republic of Iran, while the sharia thus affects up to 23% of the global population, or 1.57 billion people who are Muslims. In the United States, 51% of voters would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who did not believe in God, and only 6% more likely, and Christians made up 92% of members of the US Congress, compared with 71% of the general public, while in most European countries, however, religion has a much smaller influence on politics, although it used to be much more important. For instance, same-sex marriage and abortion were illegal in many European countries until recently, following Christian doctrine, and several European leaders are atheists, such as France's former president Francois Hollande or Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras. In Asia, the role of religion differs widely between countries, with India still one of the most religious countries and religion still having a strong impact on politics, given that Hindu nationalists have been targeting minorities like the Muslims and the Christians, who historically belonged to the lower castes, while countries such as China or Japan are largely secular and thus religion has a much smaller impact on politics. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena.
The Economics of Belief
One study has found there is a negative correlation between self-defined religiosity and the wealth of nations, meaning that the richer a nation is, the less likely its inhabitants to call themselves religious, whatever this word means to them, and many people identify themselves as part of a religion but do not self-identify as religious. According to a study from 2015, Christians hold the largest amount of wealth, 55% of the total world wealth, followed by Muslims, 5.8%, Hindus, 3.3%, and Jews, 1.1%, while adherents under the classification Irreligion or other religions hold about 34.8% of the total global wealth, while making up only about 20% of the world population. Sociologist and political economist Max Weber has argued that Protestant Christian countries are wealthier because of their Protestant work ethic, and the study of religion and morality can be contentious due to ethnocentric views on morality, failure to distinguish between in group and out group altruism, and inconsistent definitions of religiosity. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena. The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since 1980, and scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena.