"What is Religion?"

With Tom Cruise and Scientology all over the news recently, I have been focusing on the question, "What is religion?" Yesterday a local disc-jockey commented, "Doesn't a religion have to have some type of deity figure?" (Scientology does, I'm led to believe) The answer is "no," at least in the eyes of the U.S. government, Buddhists, and Unitarian Universalists. But what exactly does constitute a "religion," as compared to a club, cult, fraternity, or any other community of people united for a common purpose?

The answer, I imagine, is as multifarious as the various religions and the diverse people who practice them. What is religious for one is secular for another. The holy and the profane are in the beholder's eye.

Recently, a salesman was sitting in my office and I was telling him the story about how the church I serve used to own a liquor store and about how our church building was originally purchased by townsfolk to keep it from being turned into a juke joint. He said that if he ever started a church it would a combination blues bar and sanctuary. The language of the Blues was religious for him.

Why not? At least I could go to the same place on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Hell, I could just sleep at the church/bar, shower, and be ready to preach the Blues without an ounce of hypocrisy seeping through my beer-soaked forehead sweat.