Definition Assessment

“Religion is a personal belief in and worship of something”

The definition of religion is constantly changing and evolving. It is given one definition, and then something else is categorized as a religion, and so the definition changes. This is because every time a new practice by a group of people is discovered it is not very long before those practices are looped into the religion category. According to Jonathan Smith in “Religion, Religions, Religious,” religion is “a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture.” Therefore, most of the definitions we have heard surrounding the word religion are products of colonialism. In the beginning, practices were considered religions to those on the outside because they could not understand them. Before the term was coined, these practices were simply apart of everyday life. They were labeled and categorized as religions because those looking in needed a way to understand these practices. Because of this, most definitions incorporate some form of bias towards a certain belief system or a view that the author of that definition holds. For example, “personal belief” is typically associated with Christianity. Steven Ramey argues in “Do all Religious Adherents believe in the concept of a higher power?” that most people’s definition of religion implies some belief in a higher power. This way of thinking, however, has begun to face scrutiny. By defining it in such a way, groups that could be considered religious but do not believe in a higher power, such as Confucianism, are left out of that definition. In reality, the term religion is used to describe many aspects of life that are hard to fit under the umbrella of one singular definition. One term cannot encapsulate all of the different variations of religion. There are simply too many different applications of the term. In Craig Martin’s “Religion and the Problem of Definition,” he argues this point and states that, “we can’t come up with a definition that fits all of the everyday uses of the term.” Most everyone who tries to define religion will have some bias in their definition based on what religion has meant to them and inevitably leave something out that is considered a religion. Ultimately, the best way that someone can define religion is to define what religion means to them personally based off of their own experiences. When I look back at my own definition, I think that it definitely implies some bias; however, I think it still qualifies as a valid definition because it defines one aspect of a word that cannot be encapsulated in one singular definition. My definition reflects what the term as meant to me throughout my life. In my opinion, the term religion can never fully be explained because we encompass so much under the umbrella of that word. There could be an infinite number of definitions of religion and they would all be, to some degree, correct; however, none of them would ever be fully right. Maybe we will one day be able to find the perfect definition to encapsulate all aspects of religion, but for now there is no perfect way to define all that religion is.