serious mistake definition
serious mistake from which Ernst means to spare us is the fiction that our modern Eurocentric understanding of religion is shared by every culture and religious tradition. How one elects to define or characterize religion may not be (and often is not) the same as the choice of another. Our understanding of the term today is a decidedly novel one, tied inseparably to Modernist and Enlightenment ideals. This is because its roots lie in Europe, where it evolved alongside Christianity, later to be propagated around the globe by European Christian colonizers and missionaries.17 As with our discussion of the evolution of scientific thought, what follows will elucidate the problem with defining religion only according to modern conceptions of it.