As a first step in retooling the concept religion, to make of it a term that might be of use in talking about the world of human actions, we consider what might be the most common approach to defining anything, let alone religion: essentialism, or the approach that assumes an enduring identity, core, substance, or, simply put, essence lurks deep within objects, making them what we say they are.

A notable early attempt to develop a technical – rather than relying on a common or folk – definition of religion as a universal human feature was that of the nineteenth-century anthropologist, Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) in his influential book, Primitive Culture (1871, 2 vols.; reprinted today as Religion in Primitive Culture). A ‘rudimentary definition of religion’, he wrote, ‘seems best to fall back at once on this essential source…belief in Spiritual Beings’. In this classic, minimalist definition we see the still common emphasis on religion as a private, intellectual activity (that is, religion equals believing in this or that, as if it is all about what goes on between your two ears) rather than an emphasis on, for example, the behavioral or the social components, as in Emile Durkheim's (1858–1917) emphasis on public ritual and social institution in his still influential sociological study, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).