ABSTRACT

We often use the word “religion,” perhaps without thinking much about the way we define it. What is religious and what is non-religious? This chapter will show that scholars who study religion disagree on this issue. If we want to detect the meaning of the word, there is not much help in looking at its derivation, either. The word “religion” has Latin roots, but even in classical Rome it was interpreted in various ways. Sometimes it meant “to re-read” and sometimes “to bind together.” It is possible, of course, to imagine that religion is something that is repeated, in the form of rituals, or something that binds gods and human beings together. Yet this does not provide us much help in defining the word. The Danish sociologist of religion, Ole Riis (1996: 10), is right when he says: “In spite of the efforts of the Latin teachers, the word triggers other ideas in modern readers.”