In her lucid account of religion and evolution, Barbara King intends to tell the narrative of the origin of religion that she locates within the social realm in what she calls “belongingness.” She admits that her position on the social origins of religion is not new, and she shares an evolutionary perspective when she writes, “Over the course of prehistory, belongingness was transformed from a basic emotional relating between individuals to a deeper relating, one that had the potential to become transcendent, between people and supernatural beings or forces.” She continues by defining religion as a practice and emotional engagement with the sacred and not necessarily about beliefs dealing with supernatural beings, a position that puts her at odds with some researchers using findings from cognitive science. King does not adhere to the position that beliefs can serve as a means of cementing social unity and enhances a more permanent social body. Instead of such a role for beliefs, King refers to empathy. She explains, “All primates … exhibit empathy that is based on emotional linkage with others of their own kind.” What she is referring to at this point is cognitive empathy that she claims represented a turning point in the development of evolution's social and emotional patterns. Social patterns demonstrate humans communicating with each other by adjusting to the actions of each other. This pattern of behavior is part of a quest for the sacred, a search for meaning. Drawing a parallel between humans and primates, King calls attention to communicative actions of these respective groups that bear similarities with non-symbolic ritual. Because early religion is not intellectual or related to beliefs, it is not something subjective. It is instead emotional and social.

Although ritual has social features, not all scholars agree with King when she stresses its social origins. Robert Bellah thinks, for instance, that ritual and religion emerge from play. Play presupposes a shared intentionality, which suggests its social nature in the final analysis. The anthropologist Roy Rappaport claims that emotions are the source of ritual, and that religion comes from ritual.