Peter L. Berger, the now-departed prickly doyen of the sociology of religion, was characteristically upfront when discussing the debates over different definitions of religion: “I must confess that I find this question sublimely uninteresting” (Berger, 2014: p. 17). On the one hand, I heartily agree. There is no shortage of academic work that takes a definition of religion and uses it as a template for assessing whether something counts as “religion.” Lužný (2020), for example, argues that Czech Jediism and the Czech Church of Beer do not count as religions using a choice of (mostly functional) definitions. While he makes the valuable point that academic definitions may function to legitimate state decisions, it is less clear how the attempt to fit a religious group into a definitional box contributes to knowledge. Finding yet another case study to challenge a familiar definition is not a sign of sociological imagination, but rather of misunderstanding the function of definition. Consequently, it is only a small step to the other prevalent practice in the field, namely the infinite loop of metatheoretical discussion over the scholarly uses of “religion” (Saler, 1993; McCutcheon, 1997). Indeed, an expanded definition of religion is what Lužný recommends as a way out of the problem of accounting for “invented religions” like Jediism and the Church of Beer. Why I find both endeavors, with Berger, “sublimely uninteresting,” is simple: While we need working definitions of religion for many types of research, these definitions are – and should be – given as pragmatic ways to demarcate the field of vision rather than more or less accurate depictions of reality. The question, then, is not about truthfulness, but usefulness.

However, on the other hand, definitions are the most interesting question in the sociology of religion – just not in the way the field has traditionally considered it. To give you an example: my PhD student Helmi Halonen analyzes the ways in which the Finnish immigration authority (Migri) decides whether an asylum seeker's conversion to Christianity is genuine enough to warrant asylum based on religious discrimination in the country of origin. These can be literally life and death decisions.