Does religion exist? Jonathan Z. Smith (1982) says it does not. Yes, people do rituals; believe in an afterlife, a god; get to gether with other people who do and believe the same; write sacred texts… But they do not have a religion. Religion is a scholarly, enlightenment concept, a taxonomy for such conglomerates of actions and ideas. And, according to Smith, often a not very scientific taxonomy.
But this taxonomy didn’t remain in Academia. Like a lot of scholarly models, it became part and parcel of the conceptual world in people’s minds, the prism through which we observe our surroundings. As a result, “religious” communities started to self-identify as Religions, starting to fit better and better into the scholarly taxonomy, thus post-facto proving it…
This makes my work as a student of pre-enlightenment times very difficult. What does a world without religion look like?
No, I’m sorry, not peaceful as one might imagine…


