In short, the normative factor still has an important place in the classification of religions and will doubtless always have, since it is extraordinarily difficult to draw precise lines between disciplines primarily devoted to the normative exposition of religion, such as theology and philosophy of religion, and disciplines devoted to its description (phenomenology of religion) or scientific study (e.g., anthropology of religion, sociology of religion, or psychology of religion). The difficulty of classifying religions is accounted for by the immensity of religious diversity that history exhibits. The endeavour to group religions with common characteristics or to discover types of religions and religious phenomena belongs to the systematizing stage of religious study. The criteria employed for the classification of religions are far too numerous to catalogue completely. The classification is of particular interest because, being based in the Qurʾān, (the Islamic holy book), it is an integral part of Islamic teaching, and also because it has legal implications for Muslim treatment of followers of other religions.

All real science rests on classification and only in case we cannot succeed in classifying the various dialects of faith, shall we have to confess that a science of religion is really an impossibility. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. In response to this kind of attack the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) proposed a voluntarist defense of faith as a rational wager. Such schemes more or less clearly assume the superiority of the religions that were ranked higher (i.e., later and more complex); or, conversely, they serve as a subtle attack on all religion by demonstrating that its origins lie in some of humanity’s basest superstitions, believed to come from an early, crude stage. Many evolutionary schemes developed by anthropologists and other scholars, for example, ranked religions according to their places on a scale of development from the simplest to the most sophisticated, thus expressing an implicit judgment on the religious forms discussed. The French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges identified forms of civil religion in the foundations of the ancient city-states of Greece and Rome.

After reviewing the evidence, French investigators summon Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon for questioning. Second, most of these incidents are perpetrated by a small minority of Muslims seeking power primarily in their own areas of operation and whose primary victims are fellow Muslims. In contrast, we’ve done a pretty good job with our fellow mammals, most of which we have already logged. It follows that one cannot have knowledge and faith at the same time in relation to the same proposition; faith can only arise in the absence of knowledge. Such faith is to be distinguished from knowledge. A civil profession of faith ought to tolerate all and only those religions that tolerate others, he suggested, at least insofar as the respective religious groups do not uphold beliefs that run contrary to citizens’ duties. Established religions can prioritize otherworldly ends over life on earth, too, or identify a church leadership independent of political authorities. He reasoned, therefore, that if one decides to believe in God and to act on this basis, one gains eternal life if right but loses little if wrong, whereas if one decides not to believe, one gains little if right but may lose eternal life if wrong, concluding that the rational course is to believe.

An established religion might advocate meekness or withdrawal from public life or promote other values that run contrary to the purposes of citizenship. The Romans’ public form of religion stimulated magistrates to be scrupulous and dutiful, Polybius proposed, while the fickle, lawless masses remained restrained by their fear of gods and punishment in the afterlife. Churches may become involved in public policy, but they have to be careful. When a Christian prays for the growth of an organization, he will have no fear of the company not prospering. Although Rousseau may have given civil religion its first elaboration in political theory, the phenomenon predates him by many centuries. This definition of civil religion remains consistent with its first sustained theoretical treatment, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762). Rousseau dedicated a penultimate and relatively lengthy chapter of that work to a discussion of civil religion, laying out its central conceptual elements and emphasizing its normative importance for a healthy body politic. When did nationalist movements first arise?