religion

Also known as religious tradition, spirituality, spiritual tradition

Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, ethics, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. It is an essentially contested concept. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings.

OverviewAI-generated

Religion is a belief system and world view that functions as an activity, academic discipline, and field of study. It is a facet of marriage, mortality, the myth of origins, and culture. The subject is practiced by believers, clerics, and religious individuals. It is distinct from the existence of God, dharma, religiosity, and religious denomination, and stands in opposition to antireligion.

The topic is studied through theology, religious studies, the history of religions, and the philosophy of religion. Its geography encompasses the intersection of religion and geography. Religion is described by sources including the Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, and The Nuttall Encyclopædia. It is maintained by WikiProject Religion and has a dedicated list of religions and spiritual traditions.

In digital contexts, the subject is associated with the Portal:Religion and Category:Religion on Wikimedia platforms. It is referenced by 6,316 other encyclopedia articles. PubMed records a count of 85,136 for the query religion. The topic appears on focus lists for Wikipedia articles and utilizes the hashtag religion.

Synthesized by Vinony from 22 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, PubMed, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Research

85,136 papers

Religion and sexual identities.ReviewCurrent opinion in psychology · 2022Wolf JK, Platt LFDOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101495
Religion, Psychiatry, and Alternate Sexuality.ReviewEast Asian archives of psychiatry : official journal of the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists = Dong Ya jing shen ke xue zhi : Xianggang jing shen ke yi xue yuan qi kan · 2019Darmansjah D, Kalra G, Ventriglio A
Correlation between religion and hypertension.Internal and emergency medicine · 2019Meng Q, Zhang X, Shi R et al.DOI: 10.1007/s11739-018-1791-4
Religion and Suicide: New Findings.ReviewJournal of religion and health · 2018Gearing RE, Alonzo DDOI: 10.1007/s10943-018-0629-8
Religion, Wealth, and Health: Exploring the Economic Dimensions of Four Major Faiths.ReviewJournal of religion and health · 2024Ouali-Fernández SDOI: 10.1007/s10943-024-02150-0
Mediterranean diet and spirituality/religion: eating with meaning.ReviewAging clinical and experimental research · 2024Dominguez LJ, Veronese N, Ragusa FS et al.DOI: 10.1007/s40520-024-02873-w
Religion and suicide.ReviewJournal of religion and health · 2009Gearing RE, Lizardi DDOI: 10.1007/s10943-008-9181-2
[Religion and Mental Health in the LGBTQ+ community: a review].ReviewVertex (Buenos Aires, Argentina) · 2025Belalcazar Vivas VDOI: 10.53680/vertex.v36i169.899

via PubMed

Wikidata facts

Instance of: tradition
Image: 16 religionist symbols.png

Show 15 more facts

topic's main Wikimedia portal: Portal:Religion
Commons category: Religion
geography of topic: religion and geography
permanent duplicated item: religion
different from: religious denomination
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
studied by: humanities
maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Religion
history of topic: history of religions
has list: list of religions and spiritual traditions
facet of: tradition
P8168: Candice Night
opposite of: antireligion
topic has template: Template:Religion topics
hashtag: religion

Sources (9)

via Wikidata · CC0

~70 min read

Encyclopedic overview

64 sections

Contents

Etymology and history of the concept of "religion"
Etymology
{{lang|la|Religiō}}
{{transliteration|grc|Threskeia}}
History of the concept of "religion"
History of "nonreligion" and "secular"
Definition
Modern Western
Classical
Aspects
Beliefs
Mythology
Practices
Social organisation
Academic study
Theories
Origins and development
Cultural system
Social constructionism
Cognitive science
Comparativism
Classification
Morphological classification
Demographic classification
Specific religions
Abrahamic
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Other
East Asian
Taoism and Confucianism
Folk religions
Indian religions
Hinduism
Jainism
Buddhism
Sikhism
Indigenous and folk
Traditional African
Iranian
New religious movements
Related aspects
Law
Science
Morality
Politics
Impact
Secularism
Economics
Health
Violence
Animal sacrifice
Superstition
Agnosticism and atheism
Interfaith cooperation
Culture
Criticism
See also
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links

The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Religions have sacred histories, narratives, and mythologies, preserved in oral traditions, sacred texts, symbols, and holy places, that may attempt to explain the origin of life, the universe, and other phenomena. Religious practice may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, matrimonial and funerary services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, or public service.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “religion” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.