Religion is a social taxon that sorters use to describe the different ways people organize their lives, their relationships with others, and their conceptions of the world. It is a complex phenomenon, and most people in the world practice some form of it. Although it is difficult to define, most of us can agree that religions share some features, including beliefs about a supreme deity or gods; rituals; moral codes; institutions, such as churches and temples; sacred places and symbols; and a sense of community.
In the past, scholars have debated how to categorize religions, with most approaches being “monothetic.” These definitions operate under the classical view that a concept has some defining properties that all instances of the concept must have. For example, some scholars have used a substantial definition of religion that determines membership in the category by the presence of belief in a special kind of reality. Others have taken a functional approach that defines religion as whatever practices unite a group of people into a moral community, regardless of whether or not those practices involve belief in any unusual realities.
Then, there are the skeptics. Some argue that no definition of religion is valid. They claim that the term is a social construct with no objective meaning. Moreover, they point out that the concept of religion has been used as a tool of oppression in the past, and that it is important to examine how the concept of religion has been manipulated to serve political purposes.
Others go further, claiming that no such thing as religion exists at all. These critics reject things-hood and argue that the concept of religion is a modern invention, created in order to classify cultures as backward or godless. They also assert that the modern semantic expansion of the term went hand in hand with European colonialism, and that we should stop treating religion as if it were a real thing.
Many scholars, both realists and skeptics, have shifted their focus to how the concept of religion was developed rather than what it actually describes. This approach has helped to clarify some issues about the nature of the concept and the way that it was used in the past.
For example, some scholars have found that there are certain assumptions baked into the concept of religion, and that these assumptions skew our understanding of religious phenomena. This has led to a new class of theories that try to understand the concept without relying on its traditional forms. These theories, which have been described as “polythetic” in contrast to the more common monothetic approaches, allow for more diverse examples to be included in the category. A polythetic approach is similar to how a scientist might sort bacteria according to their properties, with the idea being that when enough of the right characteristics appear, we have a new species.