Defining

Religion
 OBJECTIVES
✔ Identify and explain the two ways of defining
religion;

✔ Differentiate religion from spirituality; and

✔ Understand the concept of religion in analyzing

the study of the world religions.
Sociologists – Anthropologists
Religion – Religion helps
unite people in a
provides an
shared
agreed way of experiences and
looking at the explanations of
world. life.

RELIGION
Belief in Spiritual Being

Historians
describes Theologians
religion in terms – concerned
of events with the beliefs
resulting from themselves
beliefs
RELIGION
RELIGIO – which means “conscientiousness” or
“reverence”

(Referring to the awe or fear felt in the spirit or deity)

RELIGARE – which means “to tie together” or “to
bind fast”
RELIGION
Religion itself is a concept that is very
contentious among scholars

Religion informs how we view religious

change, whether it is bound to fade
away or simply evolve.
 Belief in a
deity’s
relationship
with the
world

Places and
Belief in people
believed to
deity be holy and
sacred
RELIGION

Ways to Rules
followed as a
worship a result of
deity beliefs

Derived from David a Brown, A Guide to Religion p. 8 from Introduction to World Religions and Belief Systems
(2016, Vibal Group, Inc.)
 Two ways of defining Religion

SUBSTANTIVE
• It is concerned with what constitutes religion.

• Religion involves beliefs and practices which

“assume the existence of supernatural being”

• Edward Burnett Taylor – argued that religion was

the attempt of primitive individual experiences
 Two ways of defining Religion
FUNCTIONAL
• It is more concerned with the social consequences of
religion.

• It has to do with the sociological dimensions of beliefs

and practices in the context of an organization

• Emile Durkheim – religion is a unified system of beliefs

and practices relative to sacred things…, which unite
into one single moral community.
Variations of Religions
MONOTHEISTIC
Believing in the existence of one God

POLYTHEISTIC
Believing in the existence of multiple of God

NONTHEISTIC
Do not make any explicit mention of any personal
deity
Variations of Religions
MONISM
Believing that there is no real distinction between god
and the universe

ATHEISM
The disbelief in or denial of the existence of a personal
go

AGNOSTICISM
God cannot be know
The Origins of Religion
• Since the nineteenth century, people began to
show great interest in explaining the origins of
religion.

• Archaeologists believe that they have

discovered elements of religious belief practiced
by Homo Sapiens almost 60,000 years ago.

• Various explanation have surfaced that

somehow tend to simplify or even denigrate
primitive religions.
SPIRITUALITY
• Defined as relating or affecting the human spirit or
soul as opposed to material or physical things
• Derived from the Latin word spiritus, its verb root
spirare- to breathe
• There is an impression that people are surrounded by
a divine reality as pervasive, intimate, necessary and
invisible as the air we breathe.
SPIRITUALITY
• It suggest ways of relating to a higher being
• Its concept may be approached from
different disciplines such as theology and
philosophy.
• Refers to alternative forms of approaching
the divine that are not typically associated
with organized religion.
Theology THEOS
(God)
LOGOS
(study/word)

• It involves the systematic study of the existence and

nature of the divine.

• It deals with the study of nature and purpose of god

that may be undertaken using a particular perspective.

• Theology is a study, not a formulation of religious

beliefs.
 Philosophy of Religion
• It deals primarily with issues
Philosophical study of concerning religion – analysis
the nature and meaning
of religion, consists in
on the existence of a divine
analyzing religious being or on sacred texts.
concepts, beliefs and
practices.
• Philosophy of religion is
not a branch of theology
but a branch of philosophy.