About Religion
A belief in a higher power or supreme being provides a foundation for people to make sense of the world around them. It can be an emotional lifeline in the darkest of times, and it offers a path for navigating through life’s difficulties.
Many religious traditions have rules and rituals that help people live in a moral way. These rules encourage people to choose right over wrong, truth over lies, and friendship over selfishness. They also provide a framework for dealing with death and other major life events. Research shows that people who are religious have lower levels of depression and more self-control, and that they are more likely to give to charity.
While some of the early scholars who analyzed religion focused on its spiritual beliefs, others examined its social impact. Sociologist Emile Durkheim, for example, argued that religious rituals create community. He believed that a religion will become popular if it creates a common purpose, which it does by fostering a sense of belonging and a shared code of conduct.
Durkheim’s approach is a “substantive” one, meaning that it defines religion as whatever practices unite a group into a moral community (whether or not those practices involve belief in unusual realities). The other main way to look at religion is through a functional definition. This takes the classical view that a concept has a prototype and treats it as a multifaceted complex, rather than focusing on its defining property.