Conceptualizing “Religion”

how language shapes and constrains knowledge in the study of religion and health 386 ABSTRACT Despite recent advances in the field of religion and health, meaning-ful findings will increasingly depend on the capacity to conceptualize “religion ” prop-erly.To date, scientists ’ conception of religion has been shaped by the Enlightenment paradigm.However, recent developments in philosophy make the “objectivity ” of the Enlightenment paradigm problematic, if not untenable. Contrary to common under-standing, the secularism essential to the Enlightenment paradigm does not enjoy any special privilege over religious ways of seeing the world, because both religious and sec-ular worldviews constitute self-referentially complete interpretations of the human condition. If there is no objective frame of reference from which to measure religious-ness, then the study of religion and health is fundamentally contingent on the specific languages and contexts in which particular religions find expression. While applyin