Religion, French, from Lat. religio, “piety”: “summarizing term for a welter of historical phenomena with a specific reference to the “transcendent on the one hand and a human being on the other hand in a normatively determining way of their behavior” (Meyer’s Lexicon).
In the practice of religion people try to draw near to the divine (dependent on the respective idea which entity these have) and by that achieving a harmony in themselves and with the world.
It is hard to bringt the term religion down to a common denominator, because the individual religions in the world are very different in detail. Common features of religion are amongst others the common ritual action, the prayer and/or the meditation, tradition and the ethical instruction of the believers.