Pollack and Rosta - 2017 - Reflections On The Concept of Religion

Reflections on the Concept of Religion
Religion and Modernity: An International

Comparison
Detlef Pollack and Gergely Rosta
Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780198801665
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2017
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198801665.001.0001

Detlef Pollack
Gergely Rosta
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198801665.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords

There is no definition of religion that is universally valid and generally accepted
in religious studies. Increasing numbers of scholars of religion see the attempt
to define religion as doomed to failure, and therefore do not even try. A concept
of religion is, however, indispensable for staking out the subject area which the
sociology of religion and religious studies are concerned with. Defining clearly
what is meant by religion is necessary not only to determine the content of the
object to be examined and to distinguish it from other objects, but also to detect
changes in the field of study. After discussing different approaches that are
taken to define religion, the chapter proposes a working definition that combines
substantive and functional arguments. The different forms of religious meaning
available to mediate between immanence and transcendence can be classified as
religious identification, religious practices, and religious belief and experience.
Keywords: definition of religion, substantive definitions of religion, functional definitions of religion,

discourse analysis of religion, dimensions of religion, Charles Glock, religious identification, religious
practice, religious belief, religious experience
2.1. General Reflections on the Definability of Religion: Problems in

Defining Religion
There is no definition of religion that is universally valid and generally accepted
in religious studies or the social sciences concerned with religion. The number of
definitions already put forward runs into the hundreds, and pointing to the forty-
eight definitions of religion compiled by James Leuba (1921) almost one hundred
years ago has developed into something of a religious ritual in the handbooks
and introductory works in religious studies. Considering the further proliferation
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of the concept since then, we hesitate to add another definition of our own.
Some are not discouraged by the diversity of attempts at definition from at least
sketching a working concept of religion (Figl 2003: 77). Others do without a final
definition of religion, and are content instead with basing their work on an ‘open
concept’, a kind of grid or framework for the definition of the concept of religion,
and with discussing basic problems in dealing with the concept of religion
(Waardenburg 1992: 234ff.; Hock 2011: 10, 20). Not a few, however, see the
attempt to define religion as being doomed to failure, and therefore do not even
try (Kippenberg 1983: 10ff.; Arnal 2000; Fitzgerald 2016).
We wish to highlight here three of the problems to which scholars point when it
comes to determining a generally applicable definition of religion. First, they
claim again and again that the sheer diversity of religious rituals, symbols,
dogmas, experiences, institutions, communities, and roles does not lend itself to
a uniform definition, and that creating a generally applicable definition of
religion must necessarily fail because the empirical material cannot be captured
analytically. In other words, the very diversity of religious forms and ideas makes
it impossible to agree on a uniform definition of religion, and there are therefore
in principle an infinite number of concepts of religion possible (Wagner 1986).
Second, scholars also claim that providing a comprehensive concept of religion
is made difficult by the fact that there are only religions in the plural and not in
the singular (Kaufmann 1989: 77). To speak in terms of religion would therefore
mean treating it as an abstraction (p.35) that does not exist in historical and
social reality. Philosophy may have tried in the Enlightenment period to discover
a general ‘essence of religion’ underlying its manifestations, an essence from
which it could critique its historical particularities and peculiarities. However,
although used as a yardstick to evaluate historical forms of the religious, such an
‘essence of religion’ does not occur at all in the history of religion. The third
argument against using a uniform definition of religion is that such a definition
is a relatively late product of the history of religion in Europe with its strongly
Christian and Western bias (Asad 1993: 27ff.; McCutcheon 1997; Fitzgerald
2000; Dubuisson 2003; Matthes 2005). According to this argument, elements of
Western and Christian thinking have entered into this definition and greatly
restricted its universal applicability. Since the definition of religion is an
invention of Western Enlightenment modernity, the category can no longer be
taken seriously in terms of its content; rather, it can only be deconstructed and
examined regarding its function in popular discourse (Arnal 2000: 23, 30).
The problems listed here of creating a universally applicable definition of

religion usually do not stop historians and sociologists of religion from
nonetheless using the concept of religion (also, for example, Chidester 1996:
259; Bergunder 2011: 5). It is a basic concept in religious studies and the
sociology of religion, and is indispensable for staking out the subject area with
which these disciplines are concerned (Rüpke 2007: 31f.). Not clarifying this
basic concept would open the floodgates to implicit assumptions and value
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judgements, and dissolve the boundaries of empirical analysis and expose it to

arbitrary decisions. We should of course not exaggerate the importance of
conceptual definitions. Definitions do not ensure that the analysis is appropriate
to the subject matter, but represent conventions which are accepted among
researchers and which can also always turn out differently. As such conventions,
though, they form the basis of the work that makes it possible in the first place
to understand the subject matter and to observe it. Scientific analysis clearly
requires defined categories; without their application, it would remain blind.1 It
has to rely on definitions—not only to determine the content of the object to be
examined and to distinguish it from other objects, but also to detect changes in
the field of study. We can only properly answer the question so relevant to the
sociology of religion concerning the change in significance of religion in society
and the change in its social functions once it is clear what is meant by religion;
otherwise, we run the risk of making temporal comparisons of things that are of
unequal sizes, and of comparing (p.36) things that are, in fact, not comparable.
Recognizing variance means using a uniform yardstick.
Arguing that it may well be impossible to define religion in such a way that it
captures the wealth of religious phenomena is justified. The concept necessarily
lags behind the plurality offered by reality. Whether a concept is useful or not
cannot be decided at the theoretical level; rather, it can only be decided
empirically. Testing the concept against the empirical object therefore remains a
never-ending task.
This does not prevent us from making generalizations, though, since we can of
course assign different phenomena to an abstract category that subsumes them
without annulling their specificities. If Buddhism, Christianity, Islam,
Scientology, Shamanism, and Bahai are treated as specific religions, then that
certainly does not mean that we cannot bring together these specific religions
into a concept. The condition for this is that there is something in the religions
that connects them with the non-religious (e.g. art, philosophy, or literature)
(genus proximum), and that they can also be distinguished from the non-
religious (differentia specifica). If the specificity of religion cannot be identified
either by giving a genus proximum or by designating differentia specifica, then
we have to relinquish the concept of religion and talk instead in terms of
something else—culture, for example, or ideology, self-transcendence,
community, or cult. Indeed, some of the more recent approaches in religious
studies have also tended to dissolve the concept of religion into, say, the concept
of culture. Reacting critically to the claim made for the theological and
phenomenological irreducibility of religion (see, e.g., Nathan Söderblom, Rudolf
Otto, Friedrich Heiler), these approaches emphasize its cultural integration so
strongly that religion loses its distinct status within culture (Sabbatucci 1988;
Fitzgerald 2000; Dubuisson 2003). If we wish to avoid dissolving the object of
study that religious studies and the sociology of religion have, then we have to
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investigate whether there are features that are common to all religions and that
can be used to distinguish religion from other phenomena.
Finally, as regards the claim that our knowledge is dependent on cultural and
social contexts, we should acknowledge first of all that our scientific analyses
are of course always constructions that are influenced by subjective interests
and prejudices, cultural contexts and social frameworks, and can be
deconstructed as such. This does not mean, however, that our concepts and
categories are purely dependent on such preconditions underlying our
knowledge. We should assume, rather, that we construct our picture of reality
not just arbitrarily, and that this process of construction involves the object of
study, too. Radical constructivism does not argue radically enough: its
scepticism is directed only at the knowability of reality, whereas it should be
directed also at the claim of its unknowability. As researchers, we are of course
always involved productively in the analysis of our object, but that does not (p.
37) necessarily mean that our findings are extra-empirical fictions. The process
of understanding is after all a two-way process in which the subject cannot
arbitrarily decide what the object should be, a process in which the object itself
may also become the subject and prove itself capable of resisting the attempts
made by the other side to overpower it. And even if our categories are
influenced by our preconceptions, the latter do after all emerge essentially from
the reality that we are concerned with understanding.
2.2. Different Definitions of Religion

2.2.1. Substantive Definitions
A common approach to the problem of defining religion is to put forward
substantive definitions related to content. Religion is defined here through
identifying its primary characteristics—for example, by attempting to curb the
diversity of religious forms of manifestation through specifying the object to
which religions refer, and by characterizing religions through their reference to
God or to gods, through their worship of higher spiritual beings, or their belief in
one or several gods (Tylor 1871: 383f.; Pettazoni 1956; Widengren 1969: 4, 46f.).
The advantage of such a definition of religion based on its reference to God lies
in its proximity to the religious-historical material, as well as its closeness to
how those belonging to a religion actually understand themselves. Its problem,
though, is that there are several forms of religion, such as early Buddhism, the
rituals of advanced hunter societies in the Upper Palaeolithic period, and more
recent religious ideas, in which the relation to God plays no, or only a minor,
role.
Instead of the concept of God, some scholars in the field of religious studies
therefore use the category of the ‘holy’ (still central: Otto 1917), and explain that
all religions have at their centre the worship of some kind of ‘holy’ being. By
using such terminology, though, the researcher into religion becomes dependent
on how those who belong to a religion understand themselves, since what counts
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as ‘holy’ can only be determined by this self-understanding and is therefore

likely to be quite diverse. Even the worship of nation, family, freedom, or money
can then appear as a religion, if these values and institutions are worshipped as
holy, with the concept thereby losing its sharpness.2
(p.38) Frequently, therefore, neither the concept of God nor that of the holy is
the focus of the definition of religion—but, rather, that of the supernatural
(Heiler 1962: 13). But the problem that we face here again is that the object to
which we are referring is not only applicable to religion and the religious.
Reference to the supernatural and to the extraordinary can also be claimed for
art, literature, dance, ecstasy, or playing, all forms in which the human being
extends his or her everyday possibilities of experience and transcends the usual
boundaries. Can we really talk of religion when the human transcends his or her
everyday world?
The phenomenological approach of Alfred Schutz (1962), which was taken up by

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), makes a distinction between
different provinces of meaning, such as between the experiential world of the
theatre, the world of theoretical speculation, the dream world, the world of
religious experience, and the everyday life-world as the densest and highest
zone of reality. After travelling to the different provinces of meaning, the human
always returns to the everyday world. According to the phenomenological
approach, when humans transcend the everyday life-world, the ‘world of
working’, they do not necessarily give themselves to the experiential area of
religion. Rather, the act of leaving the world of the everyday and of the
immediately accessible also consists in going to the theatre, in dreaming, even in
carrying out work in sociological theory—without any of these acts of
transcending boundaries being classifiable as religious.
A more recent definition of religion, one that we can characterize as substantive,

derives from Martin Riesebrodt’s work. Rejecting functionalistic definitions,
Riesebrodt (2010: 72f.) adopts an action-theoretical approach that is oriented
towards the meaning of religious action. According to Riesebrodt, the specific
meaning of religious action lies ‘in its relation to personal or impersonal
superhuman powers, i.e., powers that control or influence what escapes human
control’ (71). It is through religious practices such as prayer, magical formulae,
sacrifice, oracles, and singing that the human makes contact with these powers
and tries to manipulate or to communicate with them (2000: 41). Riesebrodt
(2010: 80, 85f., 78) understands religion not primarily as a worldview or a
system of symbols and beliefs, and nor as a morality or an ethics, or as theology
or philosophy; rather, he sees it as an interventionist practice constituted
socially, one that aims through communicating with superhuman powers to
influence what eludes human control and thereby to ‘prevent or manage crises
(risks, dangers) when they occur’ (2000: 42). The promise of salvation held out
by religion, its capacity to ward off evil and to (p.39) overcome crisis, is
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therefore not a latent function of religious practices, but the very meaning
inscribed within them (2010: 89).
Such a concept determines the centre of religion as being cultic performance

and ritual action, while making religious discourses, religious interpretations
and theologies of secondary importance, and giving subjective religious
experiences no role at all in the definition of religion. Outside this concept are
forms of a passive, mystical religiosity that seeks rest in God, as well as forms of
a deistic religiosity that presupposes God as the basis of the world, without
wanting to ascribe interventionist influence to Him, or even regarding such
influence as being possible. Riesebrodt’s concept of religion also has a striking
resemblance to a modern understanding of technology, one that assumes that we
can increase our mastery of nature, the human being and society, and prevent
crises, by improving our technological means of controlling and determining the
world. This definition of religion proves again to be not comprehensive enough
on the one hand and not specific enough on the other. At the same time, though,
it does undoubtedly capture some central features of religion.
2.2.2. Functionalistic Definitions of Religion

To avoid the problems arising from a method of definition that starts with the
substantive assumptions of religions (for example, with religion’s object of
reference), the functional approach defines religion according not to what it
itself is, but to what it is not, and begins with the social or individual contexts in
which religion is located. The functional method relates religion to a problem to
which it is the solution (Luhmann 1977: 9f.). It relates it to the problem of social
cohesion, for example, and specifies the role that religion plays in solving this
problem. While substantive definitions seek to determine what religion is,
functional definitions seek to determine what religion does and achieves
(Dobbelaere and Lauwers 1974: 536). From a functional point of view, we could
say, for example, that religion is characterized by the fact that it ensures the
integration of a group, a community, or a society.
A typical functionalistic approach can be found in the work of Pippa Norris and
Ronald Inglehart. For Norris and Inglehart (2004: 13f., 18f.), the importance that
religion has in a society is determined above all by the experience of human
security and vulnerability to physical, social, and personal risks. The demand for
religion is greater in societies that are more exposed to existential risks than it
is in societies where there is a higher degree of human security. Such security
means on the one hand freedom from natural disasters such as floods,
earthquakes, tornados, and droughts, and, on the other, freedom from manmade
risks and dangers such as war, violations of human rights, poverty, and social
inequality. The more societies ensure peace, create access to (p.40) sufficient
amounts of food, offer health care, schooling, and adequate incomes, and reduce
social inequalities, the more the level of human security experienced by people
rises, and the demand for religious values, belief systems, and practices falls.
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For Norris and Inglehart, what is therefore crucial for understanding religion is
analysing how it deals with the problem of human insecurity. This is the problem
to which religion is related.
What speaks against this approach is that religion is concerned not only with
experiences of human insecurities, but also with increasing individual
possibilities of experience, with experiences of delimitation and of merging with
the other, with legitimating political order or terrorist acts that destroy order.
Also, experiences of human insecurities can be dealt with not only by providing
religious reassurance, but also by expanding institutions of the welfare state,
building family networks of solidarity, raising the level of prosperity, developing
insurance systems, and improving medical care—all of which the individual
experiences as guaranteeing security. Finally, a response to this problem may
also not be necessary, with the question of how best to deal with existential
insecurities remaining unanswered. The range of religious systems of
interpretation and practices is just one of many ways to deal with the problem of
insecurity. A functional demand for religion does not necessarily also bring forth
the forms of religion appropriate to the demand. By simply and unceremoniously
inferring the social importance of religion from the demand for religion, and not
specifically addressing the problem of functional equivalents, functional
approaches such as that of Norris and Inglehart tend to draw a partial picture of
the factors determining the social relevance of religion.
There are therefore two main objections to using the functional method of
definition. The first relates to the fact that it conceives of its object field too
widely and includes in its scope of observation phenomena that not even a wide
definition of religion would see as religion.3 If the problem of insecurity is made
the essential feature of religion, then non-religious institutions and ideas could
also take on religious functions and operate as religion, with the definition
thereby losing its sharpness.
The second objection is that the problem identified by the functional method as
being the problem that religion addresses (i.e. that of insecurity) is perhaps not
articulated precisely enough, and is simply unable to embrace many religious
ideas and forms. Is religion not also about experiences of finitude and death, of
disorder and chaos, of injustice and suffering, and not only about experiences of
existential insecurity? Do we really grasp the (p.41) specificity of religious
practices, beliefs, and identities when we identify the function of religion as
being to help people cope with existential insecurity?
To escape the inconsistencies and incommensurabilities involved in formulating

a universally valid definition of religion, Bourdieu suggests starting from the
struggles waged by the religious actors themselves to define the religious field
(Bourdieu 2009: 243). For Bourdieu, we cannot use a ‘prior definition’ to
determine positivistically what religion is, since the religious field provides the
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venue for the struggle over definition and therefore also over the delimitation of
responsibilities (Bourdieu 2009: 244). Against this hermeneutical principle,
however, is Bourdieu’s proposal not to rely on the definition of religion provided
by religious actors and specialists, but to observe shifting borders that are due
to the fact that quite new specialists approximate to the clergy and deal with
something that, for Bourdieu, belongs to the area of responsibility covered by
‘the clergy of old’: namely, ‘dealing with salvation’ (Bourdieu 2009: 246). This is
a task that has been taken over by psychoanalysts, sociologists, social workers
and other secular specialists, who have thereby assumed the status of religious
specialists. That Bourdieu treats psychoanalysts, sociologists, and social workers
as new religious specialists is due to the fact, though, that his argument actually
also depends on a prior definition of what religion deals with: on identifying the
problem that religion addresses as being its dealing with salvation. This prior
definition of religion is problematic because it does not, and cannot, specify why
it is that religion is concerned with salvation and not, for example, with the
legitimation of political order, the grounding of ultimate truth, the interpretation
of the world as a whole, or the healing of the body. And it is also problematic
because there are of course forms of meaning other than the religious that deal
with problems of the soul, such as psychotherapy, philosophy, art, literature, and
body techniques. Bourdieu’s proposal therefore constitutes a functional
definition of religion, one that is not yet aware that it uses a previous functional
definition of religion. And, like all functional definitions of religion, it is also
unable to explain why it is that it identifies this particular problem as being the
problem that religion addresses, and why there should be no solutions other
than religious ones to this problem.
The internal contradictions in Bourdieu’s approach and in functional definitions

of religion in general encounter two problems that any attempt to formulate a
universally valid definition of religion has to face: the question of how an
external academic perspective and a perspective from within religion itself
relate to each other, and the question of the relationship between functional
perspectives and substantive determinants. Our own suggested definition, given
below, responds to both these problems by combining functionalistic and
substantive arguments, as well as internal and external perspectives.
(p.42) Bourdieu’s argument is beset by a further problem, though, one that

requires some attention: namely, the relationship between the scientific concept
of religion and an unexplained but implicitly assumed everyday understanding of
religion, something that always apparently accompanies scientific attempts at
definition. If Bourdieu considers psychoanalysts, sociologists, and social workers
to be religious specialists because they deal with salvation, then he obviously
has in mind a certain idea of religion that underlies his sociological reflections.
In our reflections we have also repeatedly referred to an understanding of
religion not further explicated, and have measured suggested definitions
according to this understanding—when claiming, for example, that the proposed
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definitions of religion treat as religious those features that cannot be found in all
religious phenomena, or that can also be found in non-religious phenomena; or
that the definitions include features that, even with a broad understanding of
religion, cannot be regarded as religious. Do those who argue in such a way not
make scientific analysis dependent on non-scientific discourse about religion, on
an assumed, yet not explicit, prior understanding of religion—on, ultimately, an
everyday understanding of religion? In fact, the scientific definition of the
concept of religion is inevitably tied back to the everyday understanding of
religion. We wish now to complete our discussion of current concepts of religion
by dealing with the attempt that results from this insight to define religion
according to everyday discourse about religion.
2.2.3. Religion as Discourse

Increasing numbers of scholars in religious studies and the sociology of religion
have called for several years now for the everyday understanding of religion to
be made the starting point for defining religion. Arthur Greil (2009: 148), for
example, argues that religion is less an entity than a discourse category, one
whose meaning is negotiated in social interactions. Michael Bergunder (2011:
16) also argues that religious studies cannot have sole possession of its object of
study. For Bergunder, the classical definitions of religion are now discredited,
and obtain their plausibility only from their relation to everyday discourses
about religion. The unexplained, everyday understanding of religion is ‘in fact’
therefore ‘the object of study of religious studies’ (Bergunder 2011: 17). For
Bergunder, it is for this reason necessary to explore the social deposits
accumulated in the concept of religion genealogically, thus illuminating religious
discourse in its continuity and discontinuity (Bergunder 2011: 38, 44).
Bergunder argues that definitions of religion that pursue an object are doomed
to failure, since our concepts are not based on any point of reference outside our
symbolic system, and can therefore not be clearly distinguished between
concept and matter (Bergunder 2011: 26, 29). Religious studies can only be
concerned with illuminating analytically the (p.43) infinitely expanding game of
designation, in which religious studies explores itself as an integral part of the
infinite discursive game and therefore as part of the history of religion (47). It is
by exploring the discursive deposits accumulated in history that everyday
discourse on religion can be examined for its continuity and discontinuity
(Bergunder 2011: 44). We have good reason to doubt, however, the extent to
which the discourse-analysis approach can resolve the problem of defining the
concept of religion, since the approach is unable to traverse the borders of the
linguistic system of signs, therefore remaining within the medium of discourse.
It merely shifts the duality between knowledge and the object of knowledge onto
differences within the discourse. Moreover, the discourse on religion is, of
course, not the fulfilment of religion in its life-practical, ritual, emotional, ideal,
and communal reality.
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2.3. Towards a Definition of Religion

If we now attempt to outline our own definition of religion, we then build on the
dimensional research or polythetic method of definition common in the sociology
and philosophy of religion (Glock 1962; Glock and Stark 1968; Kaufmann 1989;
Wilson 1998; Saler 1993, 2008), which also declines to define religion by
pointing to a unique feature, and instead sees religion as comprising a variety of
features. The problem of the polythetic method of definition consists above all in
the fact that it often remains unclear whether all features specified are essential
for the definition of the object, or whether the existence of a selection of
features can already make the definition sufficient, and how many features are
required in such a case. Our definition of religion solves this problem by
differentiating between a functionalistic perspective, which is always possible,
though not necessary, and a substantive approach, which is indispensable. In
attempting to combine the two methods, we have both to name the problem for
which religion provides solutions, and to understand the specificity of the form
in which those solutions are provided. While we adopt the functional approach to
identify the problem that religion addresses, we adopt a form of substantive
analysis to determine the manner in which it deals with the problem.
2.3.1. The Functional Perspective

From a functional perspective, religious practices, experiences, and ideas can
relate to a number of different problems. Behind religious forms of meaning, we
can find problems to do with the finiteness of life, the injustice of suffering, the
meaningfulness of existence, the incomprehensibility of (p.44) reality, and
other problems. Whether we can bring them all together into a single all-
encompassing problem is a question that we do not need to answer here. There
is, though, much to suggest that many, though perhaps not all, of the problems
that religion addresses (and including those just mentioned) do converge in the
problem of contingency, in the problem of the uncertainty of existence. It is
therefore not surprising that sociologists and social philosophers such as Niklas
Luhmann (1972: 250f.), Jürgen Habermas (1976: 118ff.), and Hermann Lübbe
(1986) should see the functional problem that religion addresses as being the
problem of contingency.
Contingency means that something is possible, though not necessary; that

something is what it is, but could also be quite different (Aristotle Met. IX 3,
1047a: 20–6). Contingency is therefore defined by the simultaneous negation of
necessity and impossibility. In socio-structural terms, the contingency problem
arises through the selectivity of all social structures and processes. Social
structures and processes are always located in a horizon of further possibilities
that they do not realize, but that they could realize. They are therefore
necessarily contingent, which is the reason that the question of meaning can
break out in all social structures, processes, and events.
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We can only really talk of a functional problem that religion addresses when it is
located behind those acting and is not perceived by them. Contingency can also
be perceived and experienced at the individual level, however. Strictly speaking,
it is then no longer a functional problem, though, but a problem that has become
a conscious reference point for individual action, knowledge, and experience.
Contingency problems need not become conscious, however, even when
religious practices and beliefs and identities can be interpreted as forms of
dealing with these problems. Sometimes their latency is even a prerequisite for
dealing with them effectively. What is also true at the level of action is that
contingency problems may arise in any situation. Why is something the way it is,
and why is it not different? Why did that have to happen to me? Why now? Why
that? Why did this love come to an end? Why has this illness befallen me? Why
was I not invited to an interview? Why did I get the date wrong? The problem of
contingency that religious experience and action address is of universal
relevance.
The experience of contingency is typically accompanied by a sense of insecurity

and uncertainty, and often awakens a need for order and security, and not
infrequently for reassurance and comfort.4 The problem of contingency
therefore includes what market theorists understand by the demand side of
religious practice (Stark and Finke 2000). It is clear that, when it (p.45)
depends on experiences of contingency, the need for religion is not constant, but
varies according to the changing circumstances.5
The contingency problem itself can hardly be called religious (see also Stolz
2008: 258), since meaninglessness, suffering and chance, but also good fortune
and success, represent dimensions of human existence that are not religious as
such, and since there are the most varied forms of dealing with contingency
problems: we can form ideologies and interpretations of the world that explain
the contingency experienced, especially misfortune and suffering; if we
experience pain, fear, and sadness, we can have psychotherapeutic treatment,
change our behaviour, have conversations with good friends, throw ourselves
into hard work, or lower our expectations. Religious ideas and practices are only
one way of dealing with problems of contingency. What, then, distinguishes
religious forms of dealing with the problem of contingency and meaning from
other forms? Only a substantive definition of the concept of religion can answer
this question.
2.3.2. The Substantive Approach

Our first hypothesis to define the substantive core of religion is that all religious
forms of meaning work with the distinction between immanence and
transcendence, and relate to the transcendent. While everything immanent is
accessible, intersubjectively verifiable, and therefore also open to questioning
and criticism, the transcendent provides through its inaccessibility both
irrefutability and security. By distinguishing between immanence and
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transcendence, religion closes the horizons of the world and transforms what is
indeterminable in the world into something determinable. By doing so, it makes
contingency tolerable and increases bearable uncertainty (Luhmann 1972:
250f.). Our definition leaves open what the transcendent comprises in each case
—whether it is a supreme God, a multitude of gods, spirits, ancestral beings,
angels, elves, demons, or a vague higher energy. What functions as transcendent
always depends on the prevailing assumptions of normality, which vary
historically, culturally, and individually. By defining religion according to the
distinction between immanence and transcendence, we are making explicit the
fact that religions exceed the differently defined area of the empirically
comprehensible.
But religions not only exceed immanence; they also—and this is our second
substantive hypothesis—make the transcendent accessible, open to experience,
and communicable. They do this by reintroducing the distinction between
immanence and transcendence into immanence, thereby ensuring (p.46) the
accessibility of transcendence within immanence. Through this form of re-entry
(Luhmann 2000: 83f.), religions mediate between humans and God, between the
accessible and the inaccessible, the determinable and the indeterminable.
Should the claim to transcendence give religious forms an irrefutable status,
then their position within immanence allows them to be comprehensible. What
distinguishes religions from philosophical speculations is that they not only refer
to the transcendental and supernatural, but also symbolize, clarify, and reify
them. Religious forms of meaning are therefore a mixture of the determinable
and the indeterminable, of the accessible and the inaccessible, of the evidential
and the non-evidential, of immanence and transcendence. What we mean
becomes clear when we consider, for example, that participants in Holy
Communion take bread and wine, which also represent the body and the blood
of Christ. A highly tangible and earthly process therefore enables people to
experience unity with God.6
Different forms of religious meaning are available to mediate between

immanence and transcendence: rituals, prayers, meditations, icons, shrines,
altars, processions, sermons, holy scriptures, and so on. These forms of meaning
are acquired individually. If we classify the forms in which the individual
receives religious activities and objects, then, following the work of Charles
Glock and Rodney Stark (1968, see also Glock 1962), we can distinguish a
number of different dimensions. Glock took the view that there are five
dimensions in all religions: the ideological dimension (the belief in certain
religious propositions), the ritualistic dimension, the dimension of religious
experience, the intellectual dimension, which comprises knowledge about
religious teachings and dogmas, and the dimension of consequences, which is
concerned with the practical effects of belief in everyday life (Glock and Stark
1965: 19ff.). The research that grew out of Glock’s work has focused primarily
on three questions—whether all dimensions are covered by those given or
Page 12 of 16
whether others can be elicited; whether the dimensions are independent of each
other or whether some of them can be combined into one; and which of the
dimensions is dominant with regard to the others (see Roof 1979). Glock himself
in a later study eliminated the ‘consequential dimension’ and thereby reduced
his five-dimension scheme to one comprising four dimensions; claimed that the
four remaining dimensions are relatively independent of each other; and
attributed the highest importance to the dimension of belief (Glock and Stark
1968). Others have found more than five dimensions (King 1967; Hilty, Morgan,
and Burns 1984). Boos-Nünning (1972), for example, added a sixth dimension to
Glock’s five: namely, ties to the religious community, which is an obvious and
useful addition. Kecskes and Wolf (1993; 1996: 55–66), meanwhile, showed a
high statistical correlation between (p.47) religious experience and the
dimension of belief, although they were unable to prove a correlation between
these two dimensions and a scale of religious knowledge.
In the light of the work of Kecskes and Wolf and others, it probably makes sense
to exclude from the definition of individual religiosity the dimension of
knowledge. Whether someone knows a lot about religions or not need not be
related to that person’s own religiosity, to the depth of his or her religious
beliefs, or the intensity of that person’s religious practice. How appropriate it is
to incorporate the ethical dimension in the scale of religiosity is more difficult to
decide. Ethical behaviour can of course be strongly influenced by religiosity, but
moral action certainly also has sources other than the religious. Since the work
of Pierre Bayle, we know that there can be moral action independent of religion,
and that religious zeal often has amoral—indeed, barbaric—consequences. It
would probably therefore be wise to omit this dimension from the scale of
religiosity, too. If we exclude the cognitive and ethical dimensions from the
concept of individual religiosity, follow Kecskes and Wolf and combine the
dimensions of belief and experience, and, like Boos-Nünning, add the dimension
of people’s ties to the church, then we are left with three dimensions: the
dimension of identification or affiliation, the dimension of action or practice, and
the dimension of religious experiences, beliefs, and ideas. The dimension of
identification begins with the question of who belongs to a religious group or
organization, who identifies with a religion or denomination, who joins or leaves
a religious community, and who feels linked to that community. The dimension of
religious practice includes rites and cultic performances, and often forms the
spine of a religion. This dimension can be explored by posing questions about
church attendance, the practice of prayer or meditation, participation in church
life, the use of rites of passage such as baptism, marriage, funeral, and similar
practices. To outline the dimension of religious belief and religious experience,
we can ask questions, for example, about belief in God and higher beings, and in
the influence of the stars or of demons on human life; about the acceptance of
religious ideas such as heaven and hell, resurrection and rebirth; about
experiences of being close to God and angels; about experiences of conversion.
Page 13 of 16
All these religious concepts and forms have the task of creating contact with
transcendence, however this may be filled with content. At the same time,
though, they belong as human performances to immanence. If the dissociability
of the unified is annulled in the course of the religious doubling of reality, then
the religious forms of meaning gain in persuasiveness. Re-entry produces a pre-
reflexive unity between religious symbol and the reality meant, and thereby a
kind of religious certitude.
However, since the immanence and transcendence of every religious form of

meaning is simultaneous, this problem of certitude is always latent. It can erupt
in particular in situations of competition and plurality, and assume a (p.48)
sharp form. In situations where they are challenged, religions therefore need to
use sacralization to make invisible the contingency of their ideas and practices,
to equip their forms with claims of unsurpassability, to pose as unobtainable, to
erect barriers to communication, to impose restrictions on discursivity, to
constitute zones of the mysterious, to establish authorities, inner circles, and, if
all else fails, to excommunicate unbelievers. Only through erecting these
barriers to communication can religions protect their forms from criticism and
doubt.
The empirical study of religion must analyse these different forms of mediating
transcendence and immanence. It makes a difference whether the mediation of
immanence and transcendence is performed primarily through forms of
community, of affiliation to social groups such as castes or religious orders, or
whether religious rituals and practices are foregrounded, or sacred writings,
theological figures of thought and sermons; or whether inner experiences and
ideas are regarded as decisive. The different religious dimensions of action,
experience, and affiliation are not mutually exclusive, and their proportions can
be distributed differently historically, culturally, and individually. It is important
for analysis in the sociology of religion to capture how they relate to each other.
The religious dimensions shown here must be related in the analysis of religious
processes of change to contextual conditions external to religion. It is only by
doing so that we can work out the factors influencing religious change. At the
same time, though, it is inadequate to rely solely on contextual conditions to
explain processes of religious change. Dynamics internal to religion also need to
be considered. The concept of religion suggested here allows us to state the
sources of such dynamics. In our approach, they lie, first, in the modal reciprocal
relationship between the problem of contingency and the practice of overcoming
contingency, and, second, in the unavoidable dialectic between the availability
and the unavailability of the transcendental. Certain epochs in the history of
religion have been dominated by the reifying symbolization of the
transcendental, while others have emphasized more the distance between God
and the human being, and the incomprehensible sovereignty of the divine. There
therefore exists a relationship of tension between the process of the
Page 14 of 16
transcendental becoming concrete and its becoming fluid, a process that tends
in the historical development of religion to increase the span of the
transcendental at some points, and to restrict its span at others.
2.4. Conclusion
The strengths of the definition of religion that we are proposing here are closely
linked to its weaknesses. One strength is that the definition clearly (p.49)
delineates religion as an observable phenomenon that is distinct from non-
religious phenomena. Unless the distinction between immanence and
transcendence is made, and this distinction is reintroduced into immanence, we
are not dealing with religion. Exceeding the everyday world, forms of self-
transcendence, philosophical speculations about God—these can therefore not
be regarded as religious forms of meaning, since they lack the concretization of
the transcendent in the immanent, that is, the re-entry of the distinction
between transcendence and immanence into immanence that make
transcendence communicatively accessible.
At the same time, though, linking the substantive with the functional argument
means that our definition of religion also has a certain breadth. By referring to
the contingency problem, we can compare religious ideas, practices, and
experiences with non-religious forms of coping with contingency, and widen our
analytical perspectives. By making such comparisons, we can then investigate
what religious forms of meaning have in common with other forms, and what
distinguishes them. Connecting a functionalistic to a substantive approach
therefore allows us to combine a necessarily precise definition of religion with a
view of the object of study that is sufficiently broad. The distinction between
immanence and transcendence, and the symbolization of transcendence in
immanence, constitute the indispensable core of the definition; and the
reference to function, a possible, though not necessary, addition.
What is also clear is that our definition links directly to how members of
religions, believers, and religious practitioners understand themselves. What
stands at the centre of religion for religious actors is communication with the
transcendent entity that they imagine, communication made possible through
rituals, prayers, writings, images, dances, sermons, hymns, events, and
experiences. If we relate these religious practices, experiences, and symbols to
the problem that they address, then we can of course go beyond the personal
perspective of those affected. The definition proposed here takes account of
religious self-understanding; we do not ignore it, but nor do we make ourselves
dependent on it, and we are able to go beyond it. The definition therefore brings
together not only definiteness and indefiniteness, but also object language and
meta-perspective.
This flexibility in the definitional approach also implies a weakness, however. By

adopting substantive and functional perspectives, we have already decided in
Page 15 of 16
advance which substantive features religion has, and which functions it may
perform. Empirical research, though, may show very different characteristics
and functions as being central, and we would then have to correct or supplement
the features of our proposed definition. As in all theoretical reflections, empirical
work has a veto when it comes to questions of definition, too.
Notes:
1
See also Graf (2004: 237): ‘We need general terms to be able to restructure the
religious field and to distinguish it from other fields. […] It is […] not about
having a functionalist, ubiquitously usable concept of religion. But the culturally
specific or individual can only be described if we have more general concepts
available to us, concepts with which we can grasp the specific difference of this
specificity.’
(2) To make religious self-understanding the yardstick of what we can

understand analytically as religion raises a double problem, since we would then
have not only to treat as religious those phenomena that are clearly different
from religion, such as enthusiasm for football, success, or money, but also to
deny the status of religion to religious phenomena, such as freethinking or
mysticism about nature, many of which the actors themselves do not interpret as
being religious. We can certainly distinguish the enthusiasm for football, for
example, from religious ideas and practices, since its object of enthusiasm is not
something transcendent, while we may also usefully interpret the ideas,
worldviews, and practices of freethinkers as religious, although such people may
want to understand them as scientific.
(3) The problem that the functional definition of religion has in terms of
universality and delinearity has been discussed widely. See Spiro 1966: esp. 95f.;
Berger 1974; Dobbelaere and Lauwers 1974; Kaufmann 1989: 15ff.; Lambert
1991; Figl 2003: 67ff.; Stausberg 2009; Hock 2011: 16f.
(4) See Riesebrodt (2000: 45): ‘The urge to interpret and give meaning that the
human species has is particularly evident in situations of crisis, in moments of
danger and risk, when social, moral and cognitive structures collapse, when
people are confronted with their own powerlessness and helplessness in a
particularly dramatic way.’
(5) For a more detailed treatment, see Pollack (2009: 293–303).
(6) On the application of the concept of religion outlined here to the development
of the Protestant understanding of Holy Communion, see Pollack (2008).
Page 16 of 16

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Reflections on the Concept of Religion

Religion and Modernity: An International

Print publication date: 2017

Reflections on the Concept of Religion

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: definition of religion, substantive definitions of religion, functional definitions of religion,

2.1. General Reflections on the Definability of Religion: Problems in

The problems listed here of creating a universally applicable definition of

judgements, and dissolve the boundaries of empirical analysis and expose it to

2.2. Different Definitions of Religion

as ‘holy’ can only be determined by this self-understanding and is therefore

The phenomenological approach of Alfred Schutz (1962), which was taken up by

A more recent definition of religion, one that we can characterize as substantive,

Such a concept determines the centre of religion as being cultic performance

2.2.2. Functionalistic Definitions of Religion

To escape the inconsistencies and incommensurabilities involved in formulating

The internal contradictions in Bourdieu’s approach and in functional definitions

(p.42) Bourdieu’s argument is beset by a further problem, though, one that

2.2.3. Religion as Discourse

2.3. Towards a Definition of Religion

2.3.1. The Functional Perspective

Contingency means that something is possible, though not necessary; that

The experience of contingency is typically accompanied by a sense of insecurity

2.3.2. The Substantive Approach

Different forms of religious meaning are available to mediate between

However, since the immanence and transcendence of every religious form of

This flexibility in the definitional approach also implies a weakness, however. By

(2) To make religious self-understanding the yardstick of what we can

(5) For a more detailed treatment, see Pollack (2009: 293–303).

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