Religion can be defined as any system of beliefs and practices that a person adopts to organize his or her values and provide direction in life. It may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, matrimonial and funerary services, initiations, meditation, prayer, music, art, or public service. However, some definitions narrow the category of religion to exclude beliefs or behaviors that many people passionately defend as religious. Others claim that the concept of religion has no essence and therefore is merely a social construct with no underlying reality.
While the exact etymology of the term is unknown, one of the earliest derivations is from the Latin religiosi meaning “to carefully take in hand”; another, by Max Muller, is from the idea of “a devotional habit.” Regardless of its etymological roots, religion in its simplest form implies the notion that man voluntarily submits himself to the free, supernatural Being (or Beings) on whom he feels helpless and in whose powerful hands he recognizes his own perfection and happiness.
Modern scholarship has been largely concerned with understanding the dynamics of religions, and out of this multifaceted study have grown the fields known as history of religion, comparative religion, and the psychology of religion. Many researchers have emphasized the importance of acknowledging the ways in which religions can be both socially integrating and socially disruptive, and of analyzing these dynamics as they evolve and change over time.