The big idea: There is no agreed definition of religion.
That is not a gap waiting to be filled. It is the first real finding of the subject — and the examiner expects you to know it.
Everyone can name religions. Almost nobody can say what makes something one.
Try it: if religion means believing in a creator god, then Theravada Buddhism — which does not teach one — is left outside. Most scholars, and most Buddhists, would say that answer is obviously wrong. So the definition has to change.
What a definition must let in
- Traditions with one God, many gods, or none
- Traditions built on practice more than on creed
- The internal variety inside every tradition
- Traditions that spread far from where they began
What it must not do
- Take one tradition as the pattern and measure the rest by it
- Rank traditions as more or less developed
- Flatten a tradition to what its loudest members say
- Decide in advance that a belief must be false
The trap this sets: A definition is never neutral. Whichever one you pick decides who counts.
So in this course you do not defend one definition. You say which definition you are using, and what it lets in and leaves out.
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Scholars have tried three broad approaches. Step through the diagram: each one is put to the same four test cases, so you can watch the boundary move.
The same four cases, judged by three different definitions. Change the definition and the answer changes with it.
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The three approaches
Substantive — what it is about
Names the content. E B Tylor's "belief in spiritual beings" is the classic. Clear and easy to apply, but it pushes traditions that do not centre a creator god to the edge.
Functional — what it does
Names the job. Émile Durkheim described religion as beliefs and practices that unite followers into one moral community. It includes every tradition — and a good deal that is not religion at all.
Family resemblance — how much it shares
Treats religion as a family. Ninian Smart's seven dimensions are the usual list, and nothing has to show all seven. This is the approach this course rewards, because it lets you describe instead of argue.
What it is about, what it does, or what it shares with the rest of the family.
Smart's seven dimensions
- Ritual — what adherents do, and when
- Narrative or mythic — the stories a community tells about origins and purpose
- Experiential — what adherents report feeling or encountering
- Doctrinal — the beliefs, set out and argued for
- Ethical — how adherents are told to live
- Social and institutional — who leads, who decides, how it is organized
- Material — buildings, objects, art, places
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The guide's fourth question: You cannot get inside someone else's experience. What you can do is take seriously how they describe it — and notice the features that keep recurring in those descriptions across traditions.
Rudolf Otto called what adherents describe the numinous: something felt as wholly other, at once terrifying and deeply attractive. He wrote it in Latin as mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
William James, studying first-hand accounts, listed four features that kept appearing.
Ineffable
- The person says words will not carry it
- They reach for poetry, silence or a negative — "it was not like anything"
Noetic
- It felt like knowing, not just feeling
- The person comes away convinced they learned something true
Transient and passive
- It did not last long, and it could not be held onto
- It felt given rather than achieved
Where students lose marks: Writing "this proves God exists" or "this was really just a brain state".
Neither is what the question asks. The task is to describe what adherents report and what scholars notice about those reports.
How this is tested. Paper 1 never asks "what is religion?" directly. It asks you to explain an idea from a tradition — and this micro is what stops you explaining it badly.
Part (a) — 3 marks
- Identify ideas in the passage
- Bullet points are allowed
- Use the tradition's own terms
- No analysis needed, and none rewarded
Part (b) — 6 marks
- Explain the idea in the tradition
- Attribute: "Hindus hold…", "In Theravada Buddhism…"
- Support with a relevant example
- Accurate terminology, all the way through
The habit to build now: Before every sentence about a belief, ask: who holds this?
"The soul is reborn" is an assertion. "Hindus hold that the atman is reborn" is an answer. The second is the one the markbands reward.