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2:1

(In »The three dramatic revolutions of the Internet age«)

The term religion stems from Medieval French where it signified the strong and heartfelt sense of community that prevails within a collective, a group of people who make up a congregation through establishing this loyalty to each other. This French term in turn originates from the Latin re-ligare: to reconnect with somebody or something, to connect again with those who, for some reason or other, have lost contact with each other but who ought to, and/or want to, belong together. So if we follow this term back to its source, we find that in its original sense religion ought to be seen as a social practice, organised with the purpose of creating strong and enduring ties between people, an affinity that in some cases, but far from always, also includes affinity between people and a set of gods, a theism.