Some emphasize the personal, others the social some the beliefs, others the uses some the structures, others the functions some the private, others the public some the mundane, others the transcendent some the truth, others the illusion. Leuba began his book A Psychological Study of Religion вЂ¦ (1912), with nearly fifty of them, sorted into three different types) tell us much about religion, but because of their diversity, none of them on its own can tell us what religion is. These and the many other definitions of religion (J.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order that includes within it all being-human or otherwise-i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man Without further ado, then, a religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic Religion differs from other institutions in that its three component systems have reference to superhuman beings All institutions consist of belief systems, i.e., an enduring organisation of cognitions about one or more aspects of the universe action systems, an enduring organisation of behaviour patterns designed to attain ends for the satisfaction of needs and value systems, an enduring organisation of principles by which behaviour can be judged on some scale of merit. Viewed systemically, religion can be differentiated from other culturally constituted institutions by virtue only of its reference to superhuman beings. Religion is what the individual does with his own solitarinessДЄ brief, handy definition of religion is considerably more difficult than a definition of evolution, so, for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence Psychoanalytic investigation of the unconscious mental life reveals that religious beliefs correspond closely with the phantasies of infantile life, mainly unconscious ones, concerning the sexual life of one's parents and the conп¬‚icts this gives rise to It seems best to fall back at once on this essential source, and simply to claim, as a minimum definition of religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings Religion is a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the UnknowableДЄ religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. As Augustine said of time: вЂWhat, then, is time? If no one asks me I know but if I have to say what it is to one who asks, I know not.вЂ™ That has not stopped people trying to define religion, but their definitions are clearly different:

A strange thing about religion is that we all know what it is until someone asks us to tell them.

Faith meaning