• What Is Religion And How Is It Studied?

What is Religion and how is it studied? There is no rebuffing that the terminology and concept of ‘religion’ is intricate and is regularly imputed to assorted conceptualizations and traditions. Religion not only is comprised of what people do day-to-day, but it is also the ideas and beliefs that govern our experiences and daily praxis. In as much as religion imprints on all stratums of life, solely and community, it is important to study religion and culture together. Societal culture is molded by the protrusive religion. Therefore, the study of religion and its cultural influences is relevant to isolating the components that constitute how people across time, geography, and culture exhibit their cultural distinctiveness. The first notion, when studying religion, is to identify ‘religion’ as something people do. Religion is a complex system of

“In this sense, the study of religion is comparative, or more accurately the study of religion is cross-cultural, looking at religions across a range of different cultures” (Nye, p.3). It is essential to understand that any attempts to ascertain the authenticity or validity of religious 'truth' across multiple cultures is speculation that can continue ceaselessly. Furthermore, as identified by Madison Knudsen, "a person can claim to be a part of a religion but without a relationship with God or gods" (Knudsen, 2018). The epitome of studying religion and culture embodies exploring religious events, customs, beliefs and the degrees of their complex influences. The abstracted comparisons should incorporate not only the societal culture in which one lives but numerous 'cultures' world-wide. "It is only by studying the diverse expressions of religion throughout history and across cultures that we come to understand its unity and diversity" (Esposito, p.4). If examined correctly, one can see there is no exact distinction between religion and