4. How religion has changed

“How religion has changed,” looks at how the past shapes the present, and how responsible citizenship today requires some sense of history. Too often public discussions of the religious dimensions of policy issues either overlook the past or highlight recent years. But this shortened perspective makes it difficult to see what is new and what is not—and which problems, like climate change, economic inequality, and interreligious violence, are entangled in a longer past. Religion emerged long ago and has played a role in some of the big lifeway transitions—from foraging to farming to factories. There are four altered ways of imagining (new metaphors), making (new technologies), performing (new rituals), and gathering (new communities)—and the with these, there are challenges that accompanied each new religious habitat.

1. What religion is

“What religion is,” argues that if religion matters, then definitions do too. Definitions of religion have practical implications and real-life effects. Many political constitutions, for example, use the word religion. But it is not always clear what it means. There are passionate debates about how to define religion, as looking at one court case involving ordinary religious practices linked with Africa shows. That case illustrates that definitions can be controversial. Those who have tried to characterize religion have used different metaphors to understand it and offered different judgments about whether it is helpful or harmful. What religion is can also be analyzed by considering important definitions, from more critical accounts by Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx to more sympathetic ones by William James and Émile Durkheim.

3. How religion is expressed

“How religion is expressed,” aims to understand how religion functions by looking at how religion is mediated and expressed. Contrary to some writers who have been called mystics, the author suggests there is no unmediated religious experience. Religion is mediated by institutions and technologies, and also by the body and the senses. The brain shapes thinking and feeling. It orients adherents in time and space and shapes how sensory input is classified and how emotions are expressed. The embodied experience of religion is expressed through sound, smell, taste, touch, and sight. Religion is also expressed in diverse cultural forms. There are eight modes of religious expression: experiencing, imagining, making, narrating, conceptualizing, enacting, performing, and gathering.

2. What religion does

“What religion does,” continues the discussion of definitions by listing criteria for deciding which one might be most useful, and then it notes that adequate accounts describe not only what religion is but also what it does. At this point a definition is offered that aims to show how religion functions. Religion provides a sense of identity and orientation, and it is a force for social cohesion. It is sticky. It creates bonds within the group, cohesion, and bonds outside the group, adhesion. A socially effective religion will cohere, but not so much as to prevent members from making bonds with those of other faiths. Religion also provides personal meaning and wields social power. As an example of how it exerts power, the chapter examines the way that religion both supported and challenged racial injustice in South Africa.

5. Global religion today

“Global religion today” begins with a snapshot of religion today, when more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group. Religion has played an important role in public life since 1945. In the postwar period it was difficult to say whether religion—and the nationalist impulses and industrial economies it sanctioned—was bringing things together or pulling them apart. That question was even harder to answer after the 1970s, when politically assertive religion staged a comeback, global flows intensified, and environmental damage accelerated. At this moment, we face unresolved crises inherited from the colonial and industrial eras—and are bequeathing new problems to those who follow us. However, there are some reasons for hope. Adherents around the world are mobilizing religion’s resources to meet the challenges in this era when we are brought together by fiber optic cables, global consumer culture, and interfaith peace efforts, but also pulled apart by rising nationalisms, climate changes, and holy wars.