ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that religion is commonly, and mistakenly, identified with but one of its historical forms, namely, church religion as it developed in the West. In taking up this narrow view, sociology of religion tended to apply substantive rather than functional definitions of religion. Going beyond this theoretical impasse, the chapter asks what are the general anthropological conditions for that which may become institutionalized as religion; what reality does it possess, as a social fact, even before it is institutionalized; how is it constituted before it assumes one of the variable historical forms of religious institutions; and is it possible to specify the conditions under which it does become an institution. The chapter sketches answers to these questions with reference to Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality. It treats symbolic universes as meaning-systems that are objectified and individuation as a result of social processes that involve these objectifications.
