Religion and its modifiers: making sense of the definition and subtypification of a contested concept

Abstract

Despite the many definitions of religion offered over the years, religion as a general concept remains “essentially contested” and characterized by a multiplicity of competing definitions and applications. This, however, has not impeded the proliferation of new religious subcategories (e.g., new age religion, secular religion, civil religion, and cultural religion, among others) that challenge the boundaries of religion as conventionally conceived. This article examines the logics underpinning these conceptual innovations with the objective of enhancing reflexivity and clarifying the processes they aim to elucidate. Critically integrating the writings of Weber and Wittgenstein on definition and classification, I advance a framework based on ideal typification and family resemblance which allows for the intelligibility and analytic utility of unconventional subtypes, even when premised on root conceptions of religion that lack precise boundaries and defining attributes. I show how the logics underlying these subtypes are not limited to specification, but also include looser forms of family resemblance. More generally, my analysis explores conceptual classification and innovation as analytic practices involving the identification and creative interpretation of similarities, affinities, linkages, and other kinds of relationships within the constraints of “language-games” relevant not only to academic debate, but also to more basic and quotidian structures of meaning.