A religion is an organized set of beliefs and practices that provides people with a sense of meaning, purpose and identity, reinforces social cohesion and stability, promotes physical and psychological well-being, and may motivate people to work for social change. The concept of religion cuts across disciplinary boundaries, including but not limited to anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, religious studies, and psychology. Scholars debate whether a monothetic or polythetic approach to the definition of religion is appropriate, with each approach holding its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
The most popular monothetic definition of religion is that it consists of those things a person deems to be holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, or divine, and the way in which these items are treated with especial reverence by a community or individuals. Those who take this approach believe that the term should be used to describe a category of human phenomena with certain characteristics, and that it would be useful to have some sort of standard for what kinds of behaviors or phenomena qualify as religions.
A less popular but still fairly common approach to the definition of religion is that it consists of a specific worldview or ethos, with particular normative prescriptions for life and society. Clifford Geertz (see also Geertz, The Sociology of Religion ) is credited with creating this definition, which is often referred to as a “mixed” definition because it contains both a substantive and a functional element. Those who take a mixed definition argue that any tradition that grounds its normative prescriptions in a cosmological worldview is a religion. Others have objected to this definition on the grounds that it is too broad, encompassing beliefs like belief in ghosts, and that it is too narrow, excluding faith traditions such as Jainism (see Jaina Philosophy and Jainism) and Buddhism (see Buddhism ) that do not involve belief in supernatural beings.