Why religion matters, or, does it matter?

Abstract

What role does religion play in the world in which we live? Is it a positive influence, and one that ought to be supported, encouraged, and restored to some former glory, or is it negative, flawed, past any useful role it might once have played and therefore best left slowly to recede from our attention? The title of this Introduction, and of this book, is instructive for our purposes. It is both statement-religion matters-and interrogatory-does it matter? And, either way, whether it matters or it doesn’t, we have to ask why.