Religion can bring people together and provide a source of meaning in life. But it can also promote social conflict and cause people to persecute or kill each other. This is true both for individual believers and for entire communities and nations as we can see in the history of Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Many people seek to understand and explain the role that religion plays in society. For example, religious beliefs can provide a moral framework for making ethical decisions and encourage people to help others. Other religious beliefs focus on the environment and how to responsibly use natural resources. In addition, people may turn to religion to find comfort and guidance during difficult times.

A scholarly movement called the sociology of religion arose in the late nineteenth century, as interest in ethnological and philological studies of religion was revived. This was due in part to the popularity of writers such as Ernest Renan’s La vie de Jesus (1863) in France and David Friedrich Strauss’ Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872) in Germany.

Sociologists who argue for a functionalist definition of religion argue that religion binds people into like-minded groups. These communities can be a source of social support and a sense of belonging. Moreover, these groups can be a source of meaning in life by providing a spiritual and moral basis for living.

In contrast, critics of both functionalist and substantive approaches to the definition of religion argue that these definitions are too broad or narrow. They argue that substantive definitions are ethnocentric, since they treat belief in ghosts or a dichotomy between the natural and supernatural as essential features of religion. They also fail to consider faith traditions that emphasize immanence or oneness, such as Buddhism and Jainism.