Religion is a broad term for a wide variety of beliefs and practices. It is often defined as human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also sometimes defined functionally as a set of beliefs and practices that generate social cohesion or provide orientation in life. In addition, scholars have emphasized that religion can be experienced in many different ways by individuals in different cultures.

The ubiquity of the concept religion has raised questions about whether or how to sort it into categories. It has been argued that, because religion is a social genus, it should be treated as something that appears in every culture or that is inevitable. However, it is also argued that this approach misses the point that religion names a phenomenon that is always culturally specific.

There is a third option, which is to treat religion as a hermeneutic tool for understanding and comparing cultural phenomena. This view is known as the polythetic approach. Its main advantage is that it allows one to examine a wide range of cultural types without being forced to choose among them. Its disadvantage is that it does not allow for a single, definite definition of religion. It is not clear whether or how the polythetic concept of religion can be corrected, but it may offer an alternative to the monothetic approaches.