ABSTRACT
This chapter offers tools for describing and classifying the many kinds of religion, in history and today. The distinction between the sacred and the profane is basic and constitutive in and of all religions. Religions may appear so different that comparison and generalisation would seem impossible, but a large number of familiar elements combine to make distinct types of religion, although talking about ‘a religion’ as if it were a tangible, neatly bounded object also has its problems. Introducing the division between ‘i-religion’ as psychological and internal to the individual and ‘e-religion’ as external, public and objective helps to clarify differences in religious theory and practice as well as theories and methods in research. A range of main types of religion are introduced: locative and native traditions versus global, oral and literate forms and developments, polytheistic and monotheistic religion, religions with orthodoxy and without, karma-based traditions, religions that are oriented towards life in this world and those that emphasise the other-worldly. Theories of religion determine yet other views of religion: Intellectualist, symbolist, existentialist and cognitivist.
