What is Religion?

A pioneering intellectual history of the origin, contradictions and complexities of European attempts to define what is meant by 'religion'.

An ambitious and learned, yet at the same time engaging, account of the complex and often contradictory European attempts to define what is meant by 'religion', which were rooted in stories, ideas and debates going back deep into antiquity and made urgent by encounters with non-Christian religions and cultures.How should we explain differences in religious belief and practice? Philippe Borgeaud's ambitious intellectual history tells the story of how reflection on religious phenomena emerged, throughout the centuries, in European consciousness and scholarship. Christianity in particular, as Borgeaud shows, long wrestled with how to understand polytheistic cultures versus its own belief in a single omnipotent God. The Church Fathers, the author argues, sought to inherit the core of Graeco-Roman culture while rejecting its deities and religious practices; and patristic ideas were later adopted when Europeans travelling and colonising the world encountered ever more varied polytheistic traditions. At times detached, at times enchanted, these travellers' reflections provided the basis for the modern study of 'religions', and have since conditioned the mindset of anyone brought up in a European culture. The book concludes by arguing for the importance of liberation from these assumptions and instead considering religion as a form of 'play'.