Durkheim, Freud, Geertz: Definitions of Religion

"[Religion is] a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say set apart and forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community, called a church, all those who adhere to them."

-Emile Durkheim (1912)

"Religion is an attempt to master the sensory world in which we are situated by means of the wishful world which we have developed within us as a result of biological and psychological necessities" 

-Sigmund Freud (1933)

"Religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that these moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic"

-Clifford Geertz (1966)