Religion is an important and enduring feature of the human condition, a cultural structure that underlies many of the world’s most timelessly moving art and architecture, music, dance, literature, and drama; agricultural, scientific, and medical practices; and explorations of the cosmos that issued in what became modern science. Religion also gives shape and meaning to the most intimate of daily activities, providing codes for recognizing and behaving in ways that can help people deal with the countless limitations and risks that are inherent in human life.

It is common today to think of the concept of religion as a taxon for sets of social practices that share certain features or characteristics. The so-called world religions are often taken to be paradigmatic examples: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. However, it is just as possible to think of religion as a social genus that contains numerous forms and variations even when it is not present in all cultures.

In its broadest sense, religion consists of the way human beings relate to that which they regard as sacred or absolute, spiritual or divine, and worthy of special reverence. In traditional religious traditions, these concerns are articulated in terms of one’s relationship with gods or spirits; in more humanistic and naturalistic religions, they may be articulated in terms of the broader human community or the natural world.

A substantial definition of religion determines membership in the category in terms of belief in a distinctive kind of reality, whether or not this belief is held to be true. Such a definition is contrasted with functional definitions of religion that drop the substantive element and define religion in terms of the unique role a form of life can play in people’s lives, as exemplified by Emile Durkheim’s concept of “religion as whatever system of practices unite a group of individuals into a moral community.”