**1. Introduction**

While religion is among the most perplexing phenomena that we tend to encounter as we transgress through life, we all seem to know what it is and what it does. One understanding holds that, typically, religion—at least in the West—refers to an institution with a recognised body of communicants who accept a particular set of doctrines that pertain to relating us as individuals to some postulated 'ultimate nature of reality' and who gather together on some regular basis for worship. Another understanding considers differently that religion is an attitude of awe towards the gods, God, the supernatural or the mystery of life that relates to belief and affects the fundamental patterns of individual and group behaviour. The term 'religion' apparently derives from the Latin *religare* meaning 'to bind fast'. The idea seems to be that religion is something that draws us and connects us together. The classic original definition of religion is that of the anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832– 1917) who, in his 1871 work on *Primitive Religion: Religion in Primitive Culture*, stated simply that religion is 'belief in spiritual beings'. <sup>1</sup> Tylor is seeking to understand

<sup>1</sup> Tylor ([1], 1.383).

primitive religion as the foundation of all religion, and he sees animism as the most basic stage in the evolution of religion. The trouble with his understanding, however, is that it excludes such an expression as Buddhism that most of us also accept as a form of religion. It also excludes other, perhaps more secular, expressions that could be viewed as religious or are at least of interest to the sociologist of religion.

In contrast to Tylor, the sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) demurs on defining religion:

*To define religion, to say what it* is*, is not possible at the start of a presentation. Definition can only be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the study. The essence of religion is not even our concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of a particular type of social behaviour. The external courses of religious behaviour are so diverse that an understanding of this behaviour can only be achieved from the viewpoint of the subjective experience, idea, and purposes of the individuals concerned – in short, from the viewpoint of the religious behaviour's meaning.<sup>2</sup>*

The difficulty remains, however, that Weber never did get around to the conclusion of his study and therefore was unable to come to a useable understanding of religion. Nevertheless, the key notion is that religion is something that is shared between people. It takes a position on the roles, identities and interaction between ourselves as human beings, our physical/tangible as well as spiritual/emotional world and the supernatural, magical and/or miraculous. A religion need not accept the reality of the supernatural for the attitude and practice to constitute a religion, but in all cases, *it takes a position* concerning the supernatural—whether that position is affirmative, one of denial or one of ignoring. Rather than a theory of religion, my own understanding of religion is that of a definition—both ontological *and* functional, that is, attempting to convey what religion is *and* what it does. Consequently, any religion may be considered as a

*shared positing of the identity of and relationship between humanity, the world and the supernatural in terms of meaning assignment, value allocation and validating enactment.<sup>3</sup>*

Clearly, human beings are attracted to religion in one way or another because religion itself is fascinating. It deals with whatever is the most significant and valuable in life. It is for this reason alone that it occupies a central niche in all human endeavour. In being concerned with how anything becomes different from being just a machine, religion attempts to explain whatever there is that renders the world, the cosmos and ourselves into something other than the mechanical. In a word, it is primarily concerned with the miraculous, with the how and why something is—or can be—more than merely the sum of its parts.

This consideration in religion with the relationship between the parts allows that religion as a framework is a special form of culture. As such, it is a phenomenon that is

<sup>2</sup> Max Weber [2] *The Sociology of Religion* (translated by E. Fischoff from the three-volume edition in German originally published in 1920–23), Boston: Beacon, 1990).

<sup>3</sup> "A Report on the Citizen Ambassador Program's Religion and Philosophy Delegation to the People's Republic of China", *Journal of Contemporary Religion* 10.2, 1995:197).

nurtured and cultivated. The different religions of the world provide different frameworks for those who either adhere to them or have been seduced by them. They constitute configurations that allow us to see the world in certain ways, that condition us to see things as we see them, that provide us ways to differentiate what is significant from that which is not, to know the valuable from the non-valuable. To look at the world's religions is to appreciate the various ways we pattern our lives in relation to each other, to our world and to the godhead.
