ABSTRACT
What do we mean when we talk about religion? Scholars have struggled and argued for many years about how to define religion. Some emphasize the idea that religion is concerned primarily with conceptions of God, divinity, and the meaning and order of human existence. Others have tended to emphasize the way religion serves to draw distinctions between sacred (that is, transcendent or other-worldly) forms of space and belief and more mundane, or profane domains of ‘worldly’ human endeavour. Some definitions, such as that of anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973), focus on the symbolic power of religion and its ability to influence how people understand their place in the world and also to impart meaning to the actions they undertake. Other scholars have pointed out that the idea of religion as a distinct category or sphere of human activity reflects a specifically Western worldview and historical tradition. Talal Asad (1993) points out that in other cultural traditions it is not so easy to make a firm separation between religion and other spheres of life such as politics, culture, society, and economics.
