Why There Is No Such Thing as Religion

Is Marxism a religion?
What about capitalism?
Is psychotherapy a religion?
What about science?
Is Critical Race Theory a religion?

I’ve heard all of these. And more.

But if all these are a “religion”, then has the word lost all meaning?

Maybe it has.  

So we need a quick history.  

And that is what we are going to do by looking at Jack Miles’ recent book, Religion As We Know It: An Origin Story.

And we need to do this because knowing whether Christianity is a religion or is not matters for how we understand the gospel and salvation.

This post and the next 3 on “Christianity and Religion” is part of Grassroots Christianity: Growing Faith for Everyday People.

Common Usage of “Religion”: 

But first we need to start with common usage.  

The common definition of religion has two parts.  

First, religion consists of a set of beliefs, practices, and traditions about the supernatural (or what is “unseen”). 

Second, and most importantly, religion is “one kind of human activity standing alongside other kinds, such as business, politics, warfare, art, laws, sports, or science” (21).  

Basically, religion is separate from other parts of culture and from ethnic identity.

But many (academics) claim that this idea of religion:

• didn’t used to exist, because…
• people didn’t think of their religious or spiritual life as separate from the other activities in life.  

So, Where Did This Idea Come From?

Christianity invented it.

What?

Yup. 

Miles, and many others, point to the rise of Christianity as inventing our modern concept of religion. 

Letmesplain. 

Splitting Religious from Ethnic Identity

Before the rise of Christianity:

• Jews had a unified religious and ethnic identity a monotheists committed to their God.  If you wanted to worship the Jewish God you had to adopt the ENTIRE Jewish way of life.  The Jewish culture had to become your culture.  
• In the polytheism of the Roman world, people had overlapping cultural and religious practices (house gods for your native cutlure/ethnicity, city gods for where you lived, and the Roman gods of the empire).  If you moved, or learned about a god you connected with, you just adopted that god into your practice. 

So before Christianity your religion and culture were basically identical.  

But after the rise of Christianity: 

• You could worship the Jewish God (in and through Jesus) without becoming Jewish.  Christianity separated the religious part of God from the rest of Jewish life, culture, and ethnicity. 
• And you could, and should, stop worshipping the polytheistic gods and still retain your Roman cultural and ethnic identity.  Christianity separated false worship of false gods from Gentile cultural and ethnic identity.  

So after Christianity your religion and culture could be separated.

Therefore, as the story goes, Christianity invented “religion” as a separate sphere of life. 

“Religion” Through the Ages

Long story made short:

• Ancient Church: Christianity eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire, replacing polytheism but keeping all the other social and cultural aspects. 
• Medieval: Christian theologians and philosophers fill out the concept of “religion” in relationship to Judaism and Islam (which also happened to be monotheistic and focused on a sacred text).  
• Modern: This concept of religion was used in the new project called “comparative religious studies” and emerging “philosophy of religion” during the Enlightenment and beyond.  What we call Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are modern constructs fitted to the Christian mold of “religion” as a set of beliefs and practices separable from the rest of life.  
• Postmodern Critique: But in the last 40 years people have pushed back on this definition of religion (as a set of beliefs and practices, centered around sacred texts, that are separate from secular life).  They instead insist that most “religions” are fully integrated into the cultural—and even ethnic—aspects of a people.  

All that to say, what makes for a religion is highly contested these days.  And most academics shy away from it, even while popular use persists. 

Why We Should Stop With the Contrast Between Religion and Relationship

So, technically, “religion” is not a thing, even if there are things that we loosely call a religion (Christianity, Hinduism, etc.).

And this is good news for Christianity.

Christianity didn’t originally just focus on the “religious” or “spiritual” part of life.  And it certainly wasn’t focused on the private or inner life of the individual separate from the rest of life.  

These things we created much later, and mostly by the Enlightenment which had a vested interest in driving a wedge between religion and everything else (science, politics, economics, education).  

So we should stop with the contrasts between Christianity as a religion or as a relationship because this contrast is an artificial creation of an outdated concept.  

Christianity IS a Culture (even an Ethnicity)

In contrast to the “religion” view, Christianity did understand itself as another culture, even a different ethnicity, and certainly a different family.  

The real opposition is between “religion as separate from a culture” or “religion as part of culture.” 

And this difference makes all the difference. 

Why? 

Because the church should have its own culture, its own family (therefore ethnicity), and its own politics (as the Kingdom of God).

But how does this work, if people already have a culture, a family and ethnicity, and a politics?

Well, we need to look within and beyond these categories (but not by introducing a new concept like “religion” or “spiritual”).  In fact, we need to look above these at the idea of transcendence and revelation (but that is for next time). 

This post and the next 3 on “Christianity and Religion” is part of Grassroots Christianity: Growing Faith for Everyday People.