Religion is the set of beliefs, values and practices that people hold in common. It includes all the social behaviors that people engage in to express their religion, such as prayers, fasting, and devotional practices. Religious beliefs and values shape the way that people behave and the decisions they make, such as the choices they make about parenting and marriage. Religious traditions also include a wide variety of ethical systems and moral codes. Religion is a fundamental part of most people’s lives, and it affects many aspects of our societies.
Sociologists studying religion use a range of perspectives to understand its role in society and its effects on people’s lives. They may use a conflict theory, which emphasizes the ways that religion can promote social conflict, a symbolic interactionist approach, which stresses the ways that religious practices can build community cohesion, or an evolutionary perspective that considers the way that the various religions developed.
In sociology, the concept of religion has a long history. It appears in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and the word itself was probably coined by the Greek philosopher Aristoteles around 400 BCE. Since then, it has been used to describe a broad cultural system that includes all the activities of worship, moral conduct, and belief in supernatural forces. The term’religion’ is sometimes confused with religious denomination, but the concept of religion is much wider than the range of religious groups that share specific doctrines and practices.
The earliest definitions of religion focused on the idea that it consists of a belief in supernatural powers and an attempt to propitiate or please these powers. In the modern era, scholars have attempted to outline different ‘dimensions’ of religion that vary according to culture and time. However, these attempts sometimes confuse the concept by treating it as if there is some necessary and sufficient property that all religions have, or by assuming that any practice lacking a belief in supernatural powers is not really’religion’ at all.
Religion can be a source of social unity and stability, but it has also been responsible for persecution and war. Research shows that the regular practice of religion can help reduce problems such as family dissolution, poverty, out-of-wedlock births, drug and alcohol addiction, health problems, anxiety, prejudice, and incarceration. The positive effects of religion are primarily the result of its function as a cohesive force within communities, and they extend across generations. Religious communes, for example, have been shown to outlast secular ones, despite their often harsher and more restrictive rules (see below). This is probably because they provide a stronger sense of shared identity. However, some studies have reported negative outcomes of religion, such as higher rates of depression and anxiety and the tendency for religious believers to commit crimes. (See below for further discussion of these studies).) In the case of the latter, these findings may reflect underlying causes of religiosity that are not directly related to its aims and functions.