What Is Religion?

Abstract

The absence of agreed-upon criteria for determining what is religion makes it very difficult to define religion, although this has not stopped dictionaries or scholars from trying to define it. Modern scholarship tends the use of the concept of family resemblances, or prototype theory, to explain how a ramifying collection of phenomena associated with religion hangs together in a collective network. The fact that the definition of religion is in dispute suggests that the concept of religious freedom will also inherit the dispute and such indeed will turn out to be the case. Those who treat religion in a secular way have proposed that there is no need for protecting religious freedom as such, for secular liberties automatically secure such protection.