Defining Non-Church Religion

Abstract

Within the sociology of religion, the recent interest in non-church religion, also known as civil religion and invisible religion, requires an intentional definitional strategy. The minimal requirements of a definition are that: (1) it correspond positively to standard definitions in the field; and (2) it be sufficiently flexible as to apply to emergent religious phenomena in complex societies. A comparative analysis of extant definitions is provided in tabular form. A definition is proposed and explicated. Simply stated, the approach here proposed defines religion as "cosmicized ethos." The reader is hereby forgiven if he approaches this article with skepticism. Let us agree that still another definition of religion we do not need. Do not need it, that is, unless the ample discussions already available fail us in some crucial way. It is my judgment that they do. They fail us because an important new development in the social scientific study of religion demands a new analytic approach. The development is the recent attention to what is variously called civil religion (Bellah, 1967) or invisible religion (Luckmann, 1967) or whatfor reasons of analytic neutrality -I wish to label non-church religion. This essay deals with the question of the appropriate definitional strategy for the study of non-church religion in complex modern societies.