What is Religion?

As the "Studying Religion" website indicates, no one unified "theory of religion" is likely possible, and no one definition practically useful. However, there is another position that neither the website nor our encyclopaedia reading explores fully, that of understanding "religion" as a political strategy. For, despite its rather amorphous quality, the notion of religion holds considerable power. In classifying a set of practices, beliefs, symbols, or whatever else as a religion, that "religion" can access certain privileges within the context of the liberal state. Charity status and certain tax exemptions are available for new "religions" with a significant number of adherents; such benefits are not offered to (the sitgmatized and denigrated appellation of) "cults".

It is not my purpose here to compare the taxation laws of various countries. Rather, I simply wish to point out that any working definition of religion must take into account the way that groups of human beings make use of similar definitions to pursue political goals. In his course on Indigenous Spirituality, anthropologist David Turner at U of T explained that his initial fieldwork experience with the Aboriginal people of Grute Island, Australia can be understood in this way. Grute Islanders had long practiced a series of rituals and shared a collection of narratives about "the Dreaming" prior to colonial contact. Islanders had never considered these elements "religious", seeing them instead simply as their "way of life". However, faced with increasing antagonism from the missionaries in the 1960s, the Natives of Grute Island invited Dr. Turner to work with them in compiling an Aboriginal "bible", a document containing a systematic description of their history/mythology, practices, and symbolic vocabulary. In order to counter missionary claims about their "barbarity",  the Islanders sought legitimize their "way of life" as a "religion" and, in so doing, legitimize their right to keep it. The extent to which the Islanders were successful is not important in this discussion. Regardless, this example demonstrates how "religion" can be deployed as a political strategy.


In conclusion, if we are to take seriously the Encyclopaedia of Cultural Anthropology's claim that "things religious pervade other cultural systems and cannot adequately be studied separate from those contexts", then we also must investigate how those contexts (political or otherwise) infiltrate and shape "religion", and the various attempts we make at defining it.