Religion is a word that can go many places in English, as reflected in Merriam-Webster’s definition: “belief or devotion to a particular god or group of gods.” It is also used to describe the way a person behaves or believes. Thus, a Christian is a follower of Jesus, which involves daily relationship and journey with Him. The Christian faith can be summed up in one of the Apostle Paul’s letters: 1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Visiting orphans and widows is the highest form of religion.

Some scholars have claimed that a social taxon such as “religion” cannot be meaningfully defined without taking culture into account, and that the concept should therefore be left aside. Alternatively, some have argued that the idea of a universal religion is a myth and that it would make more sense to define what religion is as a set of practices that are common across cultures.

The problem with both of these ideas is that they presuppose a certain understanding of what it means to be religious—and what makes something a religion. For example, the functional approach of Durkheim and Tillich assumes that a person’s dominant concerns—whether they are beliefs in the afterlife or cosmological orders—have some axiological function to organize her or his values. In addition, it is often argued that to think of religion in terms of beliefs or any subjective states introduces Protestant bias into the study. It is better, then, to shift attention away from hidden mental states and toward the visible institutional structures that produce these attitudes.