ABSTRACT
In social science and mass media discourse, religion frequently seems to mean a religious institution or denomination and the doctrines for which that institution demands acceptance from its members, as in "Catholicism is in crisis because Catholics no longer accept the teachings of the Catholic Church." The poetry of religion is group culture, not merely individual psychology. Religion exists to confirm and reinforce and renew hope through its crises, major and minor, daily and lifelong. More precisely religion grows out of those experiences, major and minor, in which hope is confirmed, reinforced and renewed. A religious symbol recalls some person or object or event that bestows ultimate meaning on life. Religion becomes possible when a being is conscious of the inevitability of its own death and becomes inevitable when the being has experiences that suggest that death does not have the final word.
