Religion to the Power of Three

In this chapter, the author first considers religious concepts not only as tools for understanding religious culture all over the world, but also as social practices. Second, he takes into account the different strategies of concept building in various religious cultures in order to define the dimension of their social and scientific exploitation. And last, but not least he reflects the religious concepts, which he makes use of in scientific research, as much in their historical context as his historical findings in relation to systematic concepts. Religious history should not be done any more without a dimension of conceptional self-reflection, i. e. as religion to the power of two and three. Keywords:religious concepts; religious culture; religious history; social practices