Religion has a complex influence on the lives of individuals and communities. It is often central to a person’s sense of identity, and it can provide comfort in times of distress. It also provides a place for people to gather, and it can help them to find community with others who share similar beliefs. Religion can also be a source of conflict, as it can lead to feelings of superiority or hostility toward other religious groups.
Scholars have debated how to understand the concept of religion. One approach, espoused by Clifford Geertz and anthropologists like him, seeks to define religion through its symbols and rites. This approach emphasizes that any symbol or rite has its own specific meaning for those who use it. A second approach, endorsed by scholars such as Karl Asad, takes a more social-scientific view of culture that treats actions and their meaning as part of the social context in which they are practiced. This perspective challenges the validity of a hermeneutic approach to culture, but it recognizes that human subjectivity is a function of social structures.
Many scholars have taken a functionalist view of religion. They have sought to identify a minimal definition that will encompass all practices. Edward Tylor, for example, proposed that any belief in spiritual beings constitutes a religion. A similar approach was taken by Paul Tillich, who defined religion as any prevailing concern that organizes a person’s values. This functional approach, however, can be misleading, because it tends to reduce the variety of social forms to a single criterion, which is inadequate for a discipline that strives to be empirical.