The question of how religion ought to be defined has occupied social scientists for well over a century, arguably beginning with reactions against E.B. Tylor’s (1871) “minimal definition” of religion as the belief in spiritual beings. Social scientists of religion are all too familiar with the debates over emic and etic approaches to defining religion, as well as the pros and cons of substantive versus functionalist definitions. More recently, cognitive scientists of religion seem to have just taken Tylor as their starting point, treating the belief in supernatural agents as their central explanandum (e.g., Barrett and Lanman 2008; Boyer 1994; Guthrie 1993). “Belief” is no less of a theoretical term than is “religion”, and no less deserving of attention, interrogation, and clarification by the scholars who use it. With very few exceptions, critical discussion of this central concept within the psychological science of religion has been absent (Lanman 2008). As Jong (2013) observes, theoretical understandings of belief are underdeveloped in the psychological sciences more broadly, in contrast to the research literatures on other constructs like emotions (e.g., Barrett & Russell 2015; Ekman & Davidson 1995) and attitudes (e.g., Eagly & Chaiken 1993; Petty, Fazio, & Briñol 2009). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their normative epistemological concerns, philosophers and theologians have done considerably more groundwork in this area (e.g., Bishop 2007; Cohen 1995; Nottelmann 2013), but it is unclear if the fruits of their labour will trickle down in such a way as to benefit social and psychological scientists. The goal of this special issue is therefore to

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特刊简介：什么是宗教信仰？

一个多世纪以来，社会科学家一直围绕着宗教应该如何定义的问题，可以说是从反对 EB Tylor (1871) 将宗教定义为对精神存在的信仰的“最低限度定义”的反应开始的。宗教社会科学家都非常熟悉关于定义宗教的主位和主位方法的争论，以及实质性定义与功能主义定义的利弊。最近，宗教认知科学家似乎刚刚将泰勒作为他们的起点，将超自然力量的信仰视为他们的中心解释（例如，Barrett 和 Lanman 2008；Boyer 1994；Guthrie 1993）。“信仰”与“宗教”一样是一个理论术语，同样值得使用它的学者关注、质疑和澄清。除了极少数例外，宗教心理学中没有对这一中心概念进行批判性讨论（Lanman 2008）。正如 Jong (2013) 所观察到的，与情绪（例如 Barrett & Russell 2015；Ekman & Davidson 1995）和态度（例如 Eagly & Chaiken 1993；Petty、Fazio 和 Briñol 2009）。也许不足为奇，鉴于他们对规范认识论的关注，哲学家和神学家在这方面做了更多的基础工作（例如，Bishop 2007；Cohen 1995；Nottelmann 2013），但尚不清楚他们的劳动成果是否会以这种方式涓涓细流以造福社会和心理学科学家。因此，本期特刊的目标是