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Timothy Fitzgerald’s critique of the category “religion” was based on two main objections: the study of religion as a distinct discipline has grown out of the historical collusion with colonial interests that has culminated in the modern division between religion and the secular; by associating the term “religion” with sacred entities, theological assumptions have been smuggled into so-called scientific studies of religion. In this paper, I offer my own non-theological, sociocultural working definition of religion in an effort to separate “the sacred” from “religion.” I argue that religion consists of identifiable communities that adhere to traditions that are transmitted from generation to generation with an overwhelming authority. I conclude that Fitzgerald’s critique of religion does not require scholars to abandon the category, but to re-think how they use the academic findings they have extracted from their research subjects. To advance beyond Fitzgerald’s argument, I contend that academics need to work collaboratively with the religious communities they are researching by acknowledging them as the legitimate owners of the knowledge that is embedded in their authoritative traditions.

Deconstructing the definitional boundaries between religion and non-religion is recognised as a fruitful area of investigation for scholars of religion. Taking a critical perspective in understanding the gatekeeping practices of legal institutions, norms and practices in shaping the boundary between religion and non-religion is an important aspect of this methodological approach. Investigating legal gatekeeping practices can prompt critical exploration of how they impact on category formation and facilitate analysis of whose interests are served by legally mandated acts of inclusion or exclusion. This discussion will identify recent instances, where the courts have been active in shaping the boundary between religion and non-religion. Firstly, it will consider recent developments in the definitional approach of domestic UK law. Secondly, it will discuss legal responses to the registration of religious groups in Europe and, thirdly, it will explore attempts to extend freedom of religion protections to commercial corporations. Finally, it will offer some concluding remarks on how this survey of recent developments highlights the contemporary configuration of the legal boundaries between religion and non-religion.

In this article I rely on Tweed’s theory of religion as found in Crossing and Dwelling (2006) to inform my exploration of how transnational identities are negotiated through food. I show how food is an ideal lens through which to see Tweed’s theory at work on the ground, in the lives, and bodies, of transnational migrants. Focussing on the last five words of Tweed’s definition of religion, namely that religions “make homes and cross boundaries,” I address how food plays the same role that Tweed posits for religion in the processes of home making and boundary crossing. Using examples from my ethnographic fieldwork in Paris, France and Montréal, Canada I show how, for my informants, food (in place of religion in Tweed’s theory) designates “where they are from,” identifies “who they are with” and prescribes “how they move across” the various borders, both physical and psychological in their lives.

Who Says a Headscarf Emoji is Religious? (And Why?)

In this article, I offer a decidedly philosophical response to Schaffalitzky de Muckadell's essay "On Essentialism and Real Definitions of Religion." I contend that her account is not appropriately motivated by the evidence supplied. Focusing nearly entirely on the first half of her essay, in which she sets up an exclusive disjunction regarding three forms of definition, I argue that this disjunction should not be understood as exclusive and, hence, her account of the necessity of “real definitions” is less compelling than it might otherwise be. Even though I am sympathetic to the importance of striving toward real definitions, in response to Schaffalitzky de Muchadell, I resituate how such striving might look when the exclusive disjunction is abandoned.

I interviewed Scott S. Elliott in December 2013, where we discussed his recent book (as editor) Reinventing Religious Studies: Key Writings in the History of a Discipline (Acumen 2013). Our conversation ranged from the history of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion to how articles appearing in its journal, the CSSR Bulletin, over some 40-odd years have been at the leading edge of advancing debates in the study of religion, from problems in theory and method and the definition of religion, to issues of identity politics and the study of Islam.

The term “parody religion” is used to describe movements that deliberately mimic the elements of established religions and are intentionally absurd. It is generally assumed that people create and participate in parody religions primarily for their own amusement. However, the participants of parody religions occasionally demand to be taken seriously by invoking the legal rights and privileges that Western democracies afford to traditional religions. This article examines two such cases involving The Neo-American Church and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is argued that the true function of parody religions, as demonstrated by these cases, is not simply to entertain, but to force a public conversation about the definition of religion. When practitioners of parody religions demand the legal rights afforded to traditional religion, they are issuing a public challenge to articulate how exactly religion is defined. Furthermore, ardent practitioners of parody religions frequently have a political agenda and feel that the legal system’s unstated criteria of religion unfairly benefit particular established religious institutions.

This article is a review essay of Lincoln's latest book, contextualizing it within the general field of his previous work. The article situates Lincoln's work with respect to ideology critique mainly in the theoretical tradition of Marx and his critique of religion. It is argued that Lincoln's diagnosis of the current state of the study of religion remains captive to the current regulating practices deriving from some postmodern ideas, political correctness, and the hegemony of theology in 'religious' studies in the academy and its major professional association.

If man is an animal religiosum this suggests that religion is rooted in evolved cognitive and emotional structures of the human brain and mind. Although obviously a cultural system, which takes extraordinarily varied form across different cultures, the application of evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology to the understanding and explanation of religion, which has become increasingly prevalent in the last decade or so, is potentially a fruitful line of investigation. Rather than religion involving the transcending of our biological nature, as Luckmann argued, this approach would see religion as rooted in that biological nature. There are two rather different stances within evolutionary psychology, namely that which sees religion as a by-product of otherwise adaptive traits, and that which sees religion as itself adaptive, either at the individual or at the social level. These may have rather different implications for the concepts of implicit and non-institutional religion. These concepts might seem to relate more closely to more fundamental cognitive proclivities, rather than to socially adaptive and, consequently, institutionalized forms. The study of implicit and non-institutional forms of religion might thus throw considerable light on such deeply rooted factors. Here a number of fundamental cognitive mechanisms that may be relevant for the concepts of implicit and non-institutionalized religion are briefly examined. From this it is concluded that it may be time to discard a unitary definition of religion as such and concentrate instead on those diverse aspects of what has for so long inevitably defied attempts at coherent definition.

As I have noted elsewhere (Ruml 2010), it is common to hear First Nations people say “There is no word for ‘religion’ in our language.” What this actu ally means is that no word exists to refer to what has, in the West, been called “religion”; a defined, reified system of institutionalized beliefs and doctrines separate from everyday life. Instead, First Nations people speak of “the way,” a way of life; a way of being that encompasses all aspects of a person’s life. From the Indigenous perspective, prayer and worship are not things reserved for Sunday, they permeate all aspects of life, are lived day to day. Renowned historian of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith would no doubt think it quite sensible to not have a word for religion as defined above. For Smith, “nothing in heaven or on earth” answers to the name of “religion” as it has come to be defined in the West (Smith 1981, 4). In an attempt to reject the word religion, Smith, instead, refers to “religious traditions.” Religious traditions have two components: faith and cumulative tradition. Faith is a person’s response to the transcendence. He doesn’t define transcendence because, as Smith notes, as an historian one cannot observe the transcendence but we can observe the response as expressed in the cumulative tradition. By “cumulative tradition” I mean the entire mass of overt objective data that constitute the historical deposit, as it were, of the past religious life of the community in question: temples, scriptures, theological systems, dance patterns, legal and other social institutions, conventions, moral codes, myths, and so on; anything that can be and is transmitted from one person, one generation, to another, and that an historian can observe. (Smith 1964, 141) Like First Nations’ understanding of “the way,” Smith defines religion as a way of life which is lived day to day. It is never static and is always in process.

To advance knowledge of the evolution and prehistory of religions over the past two million years of human evolution, it would be useful to know whether other species, including great apes and extinct species of Australopithecines and Homo prior to Homo sapiens sapiens, exhibit behaviors that might be categorized as ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’. To determine this we need a precise and robust definition of religious behavior suitable for cross-species comparison. I develop a non-anthropocentric and non-anthropomorphic prototype definition of human religious behavior and then deconstruct it into a trans-species definition, which can be used to predict and identify religious behavior in other species.

This article will examine the religious dimensions to the phenomenon of Culture Shock. Drawing upon a functionalist definition of religion, it will argue, with some nuances, that Culture Shock sits in the Romantic tradition of Cultural Relativism and that this is best understood in religious terms. It will also compare Culture Shock to Religious Experience and Conversion Experience, further demonstrating its implicit religiosity. It will recommend changes in the way it is taught at many universities, as part of the burgeoning field of Intercultural Education.

In assembling an array of disciplines to study religion, nature and culture, the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture presents an opportunity for progress through cross-fertilization and synthesis. In so doing, the Society also challenges us to communicate with each other despite our differing assumptions. Such communication requires, first, that we explicitly define our terms, not least the three terms central to the society’s name. Ideally, our definitions will be at once substantive, applicable cross-culturally, and explicitly embedded in theory. Fortunately, current scholarship makes such definitions appear possible. In the case of the term religion, for example, cognitive science supports defining it, broadly yet substantively, as a system of thought and action for interpreting and influencing the world, built on anthropomorphic premises. Anthropomorphism, in turn, may be theorized as the inevitable consequence of a strategy of perception for an ambiguous world: namely, guess first at what matters most. Similarly broad, substantive definitions appear possible for nature and culture as well.