Towards a socio-cultural, non-theological definition of religion

This chapter contends that the academic study of religions is undertaken not to achieve any number of worthy or noble ends, such as fostering world peace, encouraging inter-religious dialogue, elevating dispossessed peoples to positions of power or to substantiate philosophical or theological arguments. Rather, its aim is to provide a framework for identifying those human activities which can be called 'religion', and to make assertions about such activities that can be tested empirically. For this reason, a proper understanding of the relationship between the academic study of religions and theology depends on the way religion is defined. In this chapter, the author proposes a two-pronged definition. One part focuses on the beliefs and experiences which identifiable communities postulate about non-falsifiable alternate realities and the other, following the French sociologist Daniele Hervieu-Leger, examines religion as the authoritative transmission of tradition. The chapter concludes that by defining religion in these ways, notions of theological essentialism are uprooted from their longstanding association with the study of religions, thereby firmly situating religious studies among the social sciences.