What Is Religion?: Edition 3

The book opens with a brief history of the idea of religion, then divides the study of religion into four essential topics – types, representations, practices and institutions – and concludes with a final, eye-opening chapter on religion today. Packed with case studies from a wide range of religions, past and present, What Is Religion? offers a very current, comprehensive, yet intellectually challenging, overview of the history, theories, practices, and study of religion.

Thoroughly updated throughout to include more global religion, non-religion, spirituality, and new religious movements, this third edition provides an accessible, wide-ranging, engaging, and concise book for undergraduate students in the study of religion. It is also invaluable for students of anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology as well as anyone interested in how and why humans became and continue to be religious.