What is religion and why can religion be considered as a culture? Actually, religion is a set of cultures, each of which follows its own cultural values, principles, norms, and practices. Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism are among the largest world religions. Let us consider the main reasons why religions should be considered as cultures (Karandashev, 2021a).

What Is Culture?

Many authors have defined the concept of culture over the last several decades from different disciplinary perspectives and from different methodological positions. Despite the variety of definitions, they all revolve around the same general concepts.

Culture is a system of historically derived and socially constructed information, ideas, and meanings shared by a group of people. This cultural system is passed down from one generation to the next through values, beliefs, practices, languages, rituals, artifacts, and so on (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952; Markus & Conner, 2013; Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012).

Culture teaches people what is good and bad, what is right and wrong, and what is moral and immoral. Culture teaches them what is and is not acceptable in daily life (Markus & Conner, 2013; Shweder, 2003). Culture includes several aspects of cultural reality. Material culture describes the ways in which people share services, goods, and technology. Subjective culture is the ideas, knowledge, and beliefs that a group of people share with each other. Social culture constitutes the institutions and social rules that they share (Chiu & Hong, 2006). Let us see below how religions fit to these criteria of culture in all aspects of material, subjective, and social culture. Religious cultures are shared by large groups of people across several countries or by a group of people within one country.

What Is Religion? And Why is It a Culture?

Generally speaking, religion is a cultural realm that is devoted to the search for meaning and significance in relation to some sacred things, such as values, beliefs, perceptions, and emotions, which believers recognize as “holy,” which are set apart from everything else, from the ordinary, and worthy of veneration and respect (Pargament, Magyar-Kussell, & Murray- Swank, 2005, p. 668). Religious beliefs are about the mighty nature of the Deity and the merciful power of God. Prayers bring a person a strong emotional experience of closeness to the sacred. Prayers to God impact the emotional well-being of devotees (Silberman, 2003).

“Loving God, I pray that you will comfort me in my suffering, lend skill to the hands of my healers, and bless the means used for my cure. Give me such confidence in the power of your grace, that even when I am afraid, I may put my whole trust in you; through our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

— Enriching Our Worship 2

Beliefs in God and prayers transfer to subsequent emotional attitudes towards other people in close and broader social circles. For example, the positive emotional dispositions of love, gratitude, humility, forgiveness, hope, and self-control are highly valued in Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian, traditions. They have been extensively explored in many studies (see for review, Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003).

Thus, one can see that all world religions fit very well into the definitions of culture as I described it above.

The Key Cultural Elements of All Religions  

All religions across history, even nontheistic religions, include (1) believing, (2) behaving, (3) bonding, and (4) belonging, along with corresponding perceptions and emotions. All religions have these parts, though they look different in different cultures and religions. Furthermore, all these world religions entail:

(1) Spiritual beliefs, cognitions, and emotions involved in the person’s perception of transcendence,

(2) Moral values, norms, rules, and practices associated with religion

(3) Collective and individual cultural rituals associated with those beliefs, dispositions, and norms

(4) Religious ceremonies, combined with emotions, foster close bonds between people as well as transcendence.

(5) Spiritual feelings of personal identification with profoundly valuable and timeless groups, as well as with deity

(Saroglou, 2011).