Religion

Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements;[1] however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.

src

Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine,[4] sacred things,[5] faith,[6] a supernatural being or supernatural beings,[7] or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life".[8] Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities and/or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture. Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that may also attempt to explain the origin of life, the universe, and other phenomena. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs.[9]

There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide.[10] About 84% of the world's population is affiliated with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or some form of folk religion.[11] The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists, and agnostics. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs.

The study of religion comprises a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion, including the ontological foundations of religious being and belief.The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo Norman (1200s AD) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what is sacred, reverence for the gods.[14][15] It is ultimately derived from the Latin word religiō. According to Cicero, religiō comes from relegere: re (meaning "again") + lego (meaning "read"), where lego is in the sense of "go over", "choose", or "consider carefully". However, some modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell have argued that religiō is derived from religare: re (meanih "again") + ligare ("bind" or "connect"), which was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation given by Lactantius in Divinae institutiones, IV, 28.[16][17] The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders: "we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden Fleece, of a knight 'of the religion of Avys'"In classic antiquity, religiō broadly meant conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation, or duty to anything.[19] In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religiō was understood as an individual virtue of worship in mundane contexts; never as doctrine, practice, or actual source of knowledge.[20][21] In general, religiō referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God.[22] Religiō was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions such as hesitation, caution, anxiety, fear; feelings of being bound, restricted, inhibited; which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context.[23] The term was also closely related to other terms like scrupulus (which meant "very precisely"), and some Roman authors related the term superstitio (which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame) to religiō at times.[23] When religiō came into English around the 1200s as religion, it took the meaning of "life bound by monastic vows" or monastic orders.[18][22] The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious things were separated from worldly things, was not used before the 1500s.[22] The concept of religion was first used in the 1500s to distinguish the domain of the church and the domain of civil authorities.

Julius Caesar used religiō to mean "obligation of an oath" when discussing captured soldiers making an oath to their captors.[24] The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder used the term religiō on elephants in that they venerate the sun and the moon.[25] Cicero used religiō as being related to cultum deorum (worship of the gods).In the ancient Greece, the Greek term threskeia (θρησκεία) was loosely translated into Latin as religiō in late antiquity. Threskeia was sparsely used in classical Greece but became more frequently used in the writings of Josephus in the 1st century AD. It was used in mundane contexts and could mean multiple things from respectful fear to excessive or harmfully distracting practices of others; to cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word deisidaimonia, which meant too much fear.