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The article focuses on the theoretical and methodological status of the concept of religion in the essentialist interpretation of ethnic community by analyzing the material of foreign researches. The key effort is to reveal whether the essentialist views on ethnic communities are compatible with the constructivist paradigm of religion. The essentialist approach to the notion of an ethnic community now develops in the frame of primordialism, which can be divided into two main directions: cultural and socio-biological. Proponents of the former concentrate on a detailed description of cultural differences between ethnic communities, with cultural diversity being accepted only to describe the essence of a particular ethnic community. Sociobiological primordialists deny cultural features’ status at the face of biological evolution. The common theoretical assumption of primordialisms turns out to be the essentialist vision: an ethnic community is endowed with the essence defined by a number of attributes, including religion. The constructivist approach, however, suggests that religion has no referent in reality and its notion is defined conventionally and empirically. Accepting this approach would deprive religion of its essence. Rendering the essence of religion relative, therefore, means blurring the boundaries defining the essence of an ethnic community. This consequence clearly contradicts the essentialist approach to an ethnic community. Thus, embracing an essentialist approach to ethnic community leads to the need to adopt the essentialist interpretation of religion.

I review the book “Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-Five Years.” I discuss all the papers in the book and highlight some recurrent issues.

Engelsk summary: “Why, Wherefrom (and When) Did Religion Appear?” This article presents my reflections on the evolution of religion from the perspective of the cognitive science of religion and the neurobiology of religion. Two important features of the brain were crucial to our evolution, i.e. the expansion of the emotional and subcortical areas on the one hand and the cortex on the other. The former was essential to the development of viable social systems and the latter to the development of stone tool technologies and material culture. Furthermore, the growth of the brain was apparently due to the growing complexity of human social structures that culture brought with it. A key feature of the brain is that it is incomplete in human infants and is first fully matured after two decades of social and cultural life: the unfinished animal that becomes completed through a particular culture. Looking closer at the neuropsychological evidence of our brains and behavior, I have identified four key human features, namely, a finely honed social cognition, a drive to communicate and cooperate, a self-deceptive brain and a superstitious brain prone to unusual mental and/or emotional experiences. These traits, I argue, are prerequisites for religious behavior. In looking through the archaeological records, there is good reason to look beyond our species into the deep hominin past. A likely candidate that seems to have evinced proto-religious behavior is Homo heidelbergensis (between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago). Dansk Resumé: I denne artikel præsenterer jeg med udgangspunkt i den kognitive og den neurobiologiske religionsvidenskab mine refleksioner over religionens evolution. To aspekter af hjernen er afgørende for vores evolution. Den ene er udvidelsen af de emotionelle og indre dele af hjernen og den anden er udvidelsen af hjernebarken. Førstnævnte var en nødvendig forudsætning for udviklingen af levedygtige social systemer og sidstnævnte for udviklingen af stenredskaber og anden materiel kultur. Hertil kommer at hjernens udvikling hang kausalt sammen med den voksende social kompleksitet og den kulturelle udvikling, som denne kompleksitet førte med sig. Hjernen har den særlige egenskab, at den ikke er fuldt udviklet ved fødslen og først er “moden” efter to årtiers sociale og kulturelle liv, hvor også hjerneskallen først er vokset endelig sammen (for kvinder 18 år for mænd 21 år). Således bliver det ufærdige dyr færdiggjort inden for en specifik kultur. Når man ser på de seneste landvindinger inden for neuropsykologien, er der fire kendetegn, som jeg mener, er konstituerende for mennesket. Disse er: en finudviklet social kognition, en kommunikations- og samarbejdsdrift, en bedragerisk hjerne samt en overtroisk hjerne med tendens til ualmindelige mentale og/eller emotionelle oplevelser. Disse egenskaber er en nødvendig forudsætning for religiøst adfærd. Når man ser på de arkæologiske vidnesbyrd i jagten på det religiøse menneske, skal man gå betydeligt længere tilbage end Homo sapiens, ja, man skal langt tilbage i homininlinjen. De første proto-religiøse træk synes at komme til syne med Homo heidelbergensis (mellem 600.000 og 400.000 år siden).

By an analysis of the Danish Humanist Society and the Danish Atheist Society, the aim of this contribution is to consider one aspect of the borderland of the Danish model of religion. On the basis of a relational approach to the study of religion, I conclude that the Humanist Society from an analytical point of view is a religion while the Atheist Society is not. In this manner, the Humanist Society should be regarded as part of the Danish model of religion while the Atheist Society should not. Therefore, it may be argued that the borderland of the Danish model of religion is located between these two organisations. Dette bidrag undersøger en del af den danske religionsmodels grænseflade gennem en analyse af foreningerne Dansk Humanistisk Samfund og Ateistisk Selskab. På baggrund af et relationelt religionsbegreb konkluderes det, at Humanistisk Samfund analytisk set er en religion og dermed en del af den danske religionsmodel. Med hensyn til Ateistisk Selskab konkluderer analysen, at denne forening analytisk set ikke er en religion men snarere en religionspolitisk forening. Ateistisk Selskab er dermed ikke en del af den danske religionsmodel. Den danske religionsmodels grænseflade kan dermed siges at befinde sig imellem disse to organisationer

First of all, this article presents sociological definitions of religion and then it generally evaluates all these attempts which have tried to define religion. Many sociologist of religion have produced various definitions of religion. However, they have failed to reach a standard definition for it. Because all this definitions have been determined by their various methodological approaches. In my opinion, this is a very natural outcome, since the sociology is very dynamic and complex. This complexity and dynamism do not give a chance to a sociologist of religion to make a universal and standard definition for religion

Within the field of study on Japanese religions, the issue of globalization tends to be associated with the missionary activities of some successful new religious movements, and there is a certain reluctance to approach analytically the dynamics of glocalization/hybridization and the power issues at stake. In this article, I address these and other related problems by taking my cue from the relativizing effects of globalization and a working definition of religion based on the concept of authority. To this aim, I focus on two case studies. The first concerns the ongoing greening of Japanese Buddhism. The second revolves around the adoption of meditational techniques by priests and lay practitioners in Hawaiian Shin Buddhism. My findings show that there are at least four factors underlying the glocalization of Japanese Buddhism, that is, global consciousness, resonance with the local tradition, decontextualization, and quest for power. Moreover, they indicate that it is possible to distinguish between two types of glocalization (glocalization and chauvinistic glocalization) and two configurations of glocalization (juxtaposition and integration).