Religion: A Sampling of Sociological Definitions

An institution consisting of culturally patterned interactions with

culturally postulated superhuman beings.
- Melford Spiro, Religion: Problems of Definition and
Explanation (1966)
Religion is a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the
ultimate conditions of his existence.
- Robet N. Bellah, Religious
Evolution (1964)
Religion is: (1) A system of symbols which acts to (2) establish
powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men
by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4)
clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the
moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
- Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural
System (1966)
Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred
things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden beliefs and
practices which united into one single moral community called a
Church, all those who adhere to them.
- Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life (1915)
Religion, then, can be defined as a system of beliefs and practices by
means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate
problems of human life.
- Milton J. Yinger, The Scientific Study of
Religion (1970)
Religion culture is that set of beliegs and symbols (and values
derived directly therefrom) pertaining to a distinction between an
empirical and super-empirical, transcendent reality; the affairs of the
empirical being subordinated in significance to the non-empirical.
- Roland Robertson, The Sociological Interpretation of
Religion (1970)
[W]e have chosen to define religions as humans organizations
primarily engage in providing general compensators bases on
supernatural assumptions.
- Rodney Stark and William S. Bainbridge, The Future of
Religion (1985)