On Defining the Religious Person

What is it about?

While philosophers of religion have attempted to define religion, sociologists of religion have focused on a different, albeit related, task. They have sought to answer the question: What criteria should we employ in order to classify a person as religious? This question has come to be asked with increasing frequency, as criteria that had proven adequate in the past have come to appear incapable of providing an appropriate standard for judgement. Debate over the criteria to be employed has intensified along with the growing perplexity regarding just what ‘religion’ means. Until relatively recently, two criteria of religiosity have been widely regarded as individually necessary and jointly sufficient: if a person was (i) affiliated to a religious institution, and (ii) held religious beliefs, then he or she could be classified as ‘religious’ as opposed to ‘non-religious’. It has been increasingly recognised that these two traditional criteria of religiosity are inadequate with respect to non-western religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. However, it is less commonly recognised that they are also inadequate not only with respect to Judaism and Islam but also, as I shall argue, with respect to Christianity. The article concludes that it is best to avoid grand generalisations about what religious people do or should believe, or about how they do or should behave and within what institutional contexts. Hence, any adequate definition of ‘religiosity’ needs to be premised upon a greater awareness of the many forms of religious belief that can be held and of the many ways, including those outside of the recognised traditional institutional forms, in which religious activities may be practiced.

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Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash