Social Forms of Religions in Contemporary Society 53
Aside from these various forms of contestation around the category of religion,
it is also quite clear that, throughout the world, an important array of beliefs and
practices that might count as religion end up escaping inclusion under its umbrella
for no other reason than that no movement has arisen to effect such incorpora-
tion. In other words, not everything potentially “religious” ends up being included
within a religion or being deliberately denied that classification. Under this heading
would fall many of the things that appear under the analytic category of “popular”
or “folk” religious practices, ranging from the many local temples to various indige-
nous deities in China, to shamanistic traditions in many cultural regions of the world,
to “witchcraft” beliefs and practices in various parts of Africa. If one adds these ex-
clusions from the category to the contestations surrounding it outlined above, the
question that inevitably poses itself is, how religion actually acquires social form in
these circumstances. What forms give religion and religions concrete expression be-
yond that of an observer’s category? To some degree, as noted, outside recognition
as religion is of course critical. But this cannot be all. For religion to acquire a dis-
tinct social existence, there must be ways of giving it structured social form. The
next section address itself directly to this question of the social forms of religion and
religions.
SOCIAL FORMS OF RELIGION AND RELIGIONS IN GLOBAL SOCIETY
To a large degree, the question of social form is another way of asking how reli-
gion/nonreligion and religion/religion boundaries are created and reproduced. Ob-
servation and categorization as religion is an important part of that, but various other
mechanisms make the category concretely visible in our social worlds. These strategies
can be divided into three dimensions, namely spatial, temporal, and social. We can iso-
late particular places as manifesting what we call religion; we can delimit specific times
as religious times; and we can attach religion to certain persons. Thus, throughout the
history of human societies, we find the more or less clear identification of sacred places,
sacred times, and sacred persons. These have by no means been absolute distinctions:
Sacred places can be temporary, sacred times can be vague as to their beginning and
end, and persons can acquire and lose sacred status. Moreover, the implicit distinction
between sacred and profane that such identification implies may itself be rather fluid
given that in many of these social contexts, differentiating the religious from the non-
religious in any consistent way is not that important. For historical reasons, as outlined
above, it is precisely this distinction, however, that is at issue in contemporary soci-
ety. The development of powerful nonreligious social systems such as economy, state,
science, or education provides the context for a more visible distinction of religion as
something different. The notion of a plurality of religions means that this construction
of religion will happen to a large extent as their carriers identify different religions in
comparison and in contrast to others. This double challenge of institutionalizing re-
ligion as both “something else” in comparison to the putatively nonreligious and as
a “different something” in contrast to other religions calls for forms and mechanisms
that make clear when, where, and for whom which set of religious rules applies. All
three of these modes of demarcation are important, but the “for whom” question in
contemporary global society seems to be the one that is most consistently critical and
contentious.