In this post about religion, I was particularly drawn to the Ted Talk by Kwame Anthony Appiah in which he discusses generalisations around religion and whether they are true, such as ‘Religion is bad’ or ‘religion is good’. He also discusses the ways in which religion is categorised, often through the idea that it involves belief in spiritual beings. The discussion explores the religions we commonly list: Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity, and questions how this list was originally formed.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY: Accessed: 7.5.26)
Appiah explains that European travellers, generally from Christian cultures, travelled around the world and arrived in places where Christianity did not exist. This led them to ask: what do these people have instead? They looked for rituals or practices similar to Christianity and declared these to be the religion of that country. From this video, I learnt that Christianity is a creedal religion, meaning that people believe it provides guidance on how to do the right things and, historically, when people were not following these ‘right’ things, this sometimes resulted in war and violence to ‘put this right’.
However, during the 19th Century, science began to establish itself more firmly and people started finding ways to intertwine scientific thinking with Christian beliefs. Before this period, many natural events would have been attributed directly to religion or God. From the 19th Century onwards, ways of thinking were no longer singularly linked to religion and people began to think philosophically as well.
Appiah then discusses spiritual practices within the village he comes from in Ghana and how these were interpreted as religion by European observers. He also describes how these practices still exist in modern life, for example pouring part of a drink onto the floor to ‘share with the ancestors’. He explains that these are not people ‘stuck in the past’, but modern individuals working in banking, technology and other professions, who still strongly believe in spirits and actively participate in these practices.
This made me think about the way we ask people to tick a box to ‘describe their religion’ and the huge limitations within this process. It feels impossible when there are thousands of spiritual practices and belief systems around the world. This connects closely to the article A ‘Life Style Choice’ or a Philosophical Belief?: The Argument for Veganism and Vegetarianism to be a Protected Philosophical Belief and the Position in England and Wales by Paul McKeown and Rachel Ann Dunn. The authors state that: “Ethical and environmental vegans ‘make their choices in line with their core values. They want to live in alignment with their beliefs.’”
Image shows ‘Religion’ data sets in the EDI report from across UAL: Accessed 21/05/26: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/561434/EDI-Report-2025.pdf:
Following this video and reading the article, it seems impossible to fully categorise religion. Religious framing itself appears to be a construct heavily shaped by Christian values and belief systems. Philosophical and spiritual practices may be infinite, and by enforcing a box-ticking exercise we risk alienating students and staff whose beliefs do not fit neatly within predefined categories. A more inclusive approach may be to provide an open response box (if a box is needed at all) allowing individuals to describe their own religion, philosophical belief or spiritual practice in their own terms.