Religion is a large social taxon that encompasses a wide range of human beliefs and practices. It is difficult to define, and there are many controversies about what is and is not a religion. For example, it is often argued that political ideologies like communism and fascism are religions although they do not have all the traditional characteristics of a religion such as belief in an afterlife or supernatural beings.
Traditionally, scholars have approached religion by studying texts such as scripture and doctrine and the lives (“vitae”) of religious and spiritual figures like saints, mystics and prophets. This can be interesting and informative, but it misses a lot of what is going on in the lives of most people who declare themselves religious and spiritual.
More recently, scholars have shifted their attention to looking at how ordinary people engage, use, express, and create religion and spirituality in their everyday lives. This approach is sometimes called Living Religion. This is not to suggest that there is no place for studying religious and spiritual traditions in their historical forms, but rather that a study of them should take into account the way in which these practices are lived out in modern societies.
One can see this change in emphasis in the work of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. These social theorists developed a theory of religion in which it is a functional ‘glue’ that holds society together and is the source of moral values. In this article, we consider two philosophical issues that arise for this social ‘glue’ concept and that are probably also present for other abstract concepts that sort cultural types such as culture itself.