【作者】詹姆斯.M.多诺万
【内容提要】
Clearly, there is no definitive definition of religion. The bulk of jurists faced with the task of developing a definition of religion, favor the functional interpretation over simple performative and organizational criteria. Expecting a functional definition to be also generative, future opinions should be able to tie the psychological function of religion more meaningfully to performative and exterior indicators than has thus far been the case.The social sciences and the field of law have independently converged toward some sort of functional understanding of religion, allowing both fields to rest more secure in their conclusions. Both, however, have had difficulty operationalizing this intellectual understanding of a psychological function into objective and reliable indicators. Anthropology, however, seems better equipped to resolve this problem. By combining the tools of psychology, sociology and sociolinguistics, for example, anthropology can investigate both the objects of true belief, and the effects of that belief upon the individual and society. Law, on the other hand, has no such tools or methods to investigate these problems. Instead, law can only decide what research outcomes produced by others, such as anthropologists, will be appropriate for resolving legal issues.