Religion is a major source of hope for many people and provides them with guidance and direction in their lives. It also helps them to cope with a range of social problems, including drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide, out-of-wedlock births, crime, and mental illness. It can even help poor persons rise out of poverty, and regular religious attendance improves health, learning, economic well-being, self-control and moral judgment, and the capacity to love and care. Unfortunately, religion has also been the source of oppression, hatred, intolerance and war down through the centuries.
The classic model of the “three Cs” – the true, beautiful, and good – is an excellent description of what most religions teach explicitly and implicitly. However, to better account for the role of religion in society, it would be helpful to add a fourth C: community.
In general, most religions provide people with a sense of social glue that holds them together, and they do this through shared rituals and common beliefs (or lack thereof). The most common form of religious faith is a belief in a supreme deity or god or gods. Nevertheless, some people do not believe in any god or goddess or do not regard their religious beliefs as sacred. These beliefs are not considered religions, but might be classified as superstitions or heresy.
Emile Durkheim argued that religion serves a number of functions for society, regardless of what specific set of religious beliefs is held. This is known as a functional definition of religion.