Religion is a unified system of thoughts and feelings about someone or something sacred, about forces that are beyond the grasp of human beings. It also involves a set of values which guide people in their relations with others, and it often includes codes of recognition and behavior that organize social hierarchy. It can involve the idea of eternal punishment or reward, although this is only a part of some religions.
In addition, all religions provide a source of hope in the face of what humans realize is their profoundly limited control over the world around them and over the ages to come. This is an important source of human resilience.
The academic study of religion focuses on the nature, development, and function of these systems of meaning and value. It is sometimes viewed as a special form of anthropology, but it has also been described as an approach to understanding society which uses tools from other disciplines.
The term “religion” came from the Latin word religio, which approximates to scrupulousness, conscientiousness, piety, or devotedness. Sociologist Max Weber used it to refer to the set of beliefs and values that create a religion, but he did not extend the concept far enough to include the ways in which religions actually work in people’s lives, as explained above.
In addition to the three-sided model of the true, the beautiful, and the good, which is a classic account of what any religion explicitly and implicitly teaches, one can add a fourth dimension: community. The sense of community that religion provides, along with its codes of recognition and behaviour, is a powerful way to reduce poverty, to build self-esteem among the poorest members of societies, to organize hierarchies, and to provide incentives for effort.