Religions are systems of values, rules, and practices in which people organize their lives and deal with ultimate concerns about themselves and their life after death. They may be organized around gods, spirits, ancestors, the broader human or natural world or a particular cultural tradition. In a more secular and naturalistic view, religions may be understood as social formations in which a person takes on values or beliefs that can serve as a guide for living (morality).

Religion makes life as project a bit easier by providing means to attain important goals. Some of these goals are proximate, involving the achievement of a wiser, more fruitful, more charitable, or more successful way of life; others are ultimate in that they pertain to the eventual condition of this and other persons and the cosmos itself.

Some critics of the concept religion have argued that it is a Western invention that names a taxon of social formations that are not really different and that it is inappropriate to use it to refer to anything that does not fit its modern semantic expansion into areas influenced by modern European thought and culture. These critics suggest that it would be better to develop an entirely new term for religion in order to free the concept from its limiting associations. However, this approach is not without its dangers. It is possible that the use of this new term could be as stigmatizing as the original use of the word itself and that it might further distance us from the two-thirds of Americans who live with a religious framework in their personal and family lives.