Ebook: The Ontological Status of Religion and Its Significance for Religious Freedom

From introduction: In recent years, the shape of the discourse
in religious studies has been dominated by social constructionist
works. Now the concept ‘religion’ is therefore intensively
disputed; does it truly exist? Is it real? According to social
constructionists, the very notion of religion is genealogically
unique to western modern civilization and is closely related to
the history of colonialism. It is intertwined with modernization
and secularization which tends to separate ‘religious’ associated
with irrationality from ‘secular ’ associated with rationality.
Conceptually, ‘religion’ has no reference in the real world and
cannot pick out a distinctive phenomenon across cultures so
that is analytically useless. For these reasons, religion is
considered as an illusory category and the presence of religious
studies is merely to maintain such a fiction.

Hence, the main objective of this book is to provide an
ontological account for the category ‘religion’ that is disputed in
some social constructionist works and justify its significance for
religious freedom. This book argues that religion exists and is
real as a distinctive social category, though it is socially
constructed, because it has a distinctive causal power in
society; it can create discrimination as well as overcome it.