Religion is a set of cultural systems that involve beliefs, practices and ethics. It is a broad category that includes all of the world’s major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, as well as smaller religious traditions like the Maoists and the Yoruba. It also encompasses the beliefs, practices and ethical values that people hold in their private lives that they consider to be important, even if they do not belong to any formal religion.
A number of scholars have defined religion in different ways, with some treating it as a single, unified whole and others taking it to be a multifaceted complex of social forms. The concept of a multifaceted complex of social formations is not new, for example Christian theologians traditionally analyzed the anatomy of their way of life by considering its constituent parts (fides, fiducia and fidelity). Today, it is common to see the term Religion used for what might be called a monothetic set of definitions.
This category of definitions treats the notion of religion as a set of practices, communities and institutions that claim transcendent status and are characterized by certain key features. These features include, at least according to Lincoln, a community of believers with distinct symbols and rituals; beliefs that are held as sacred by those in the community; an authoritative source of information about the origin and nature of life; and institutional structures for managing those members who are devoted to their practices, communities and beliefs.