After reading David Chidester’s Authentic Fakes, I have a better outlook on the meaning of religion. It seems that Chidester’s purpose was to have his audience question themselves about what religion means to them. My family has never been strongly religious, so I did not have a deep understanding of what religion actually is before reading this article. My only insight on religion was through the media and opinions of others. However, after reading Chidester’s point of view, I define religion as the beliefs and traditions that people live by on a daily basis. According to the article, no one has the same understanding of the definition of religion. For example, Emile Durkheim defined religion as “beliefs and practices relating to a sacred focus that unifies people as a community.” Whereas E. B. Tylor defined religion as “beliefs and practices relating to the supernatural”. No two people have the same perspective on religion because there essentially is not just one definition.…show more content… However, he began to make more sense when he stated, “Although all of these participants in popular culture use the term religion, they use it in different ways.” Chidester’s purpose was to encourage the reader to think of religion outside of the traditional definition. He wanted us to view these parts of pop culture as religion because of the “community of allegiance”. Chidester quotes that baseball is considered a religion because it preserves “the symbols, myths, and rituals of a sacred collectivity.” This does make sense because baseball, rock n’ roll, and the Coca Cola company implement similar ways of following them as a
