What Makes a Belief Religious?

A seminarian asked me yesterday if I knew of any books that address the question of what makes a belief religious. I immediately thought of Roy Clouser's The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories and loaned him my copy. As providence would have it, today Joe Carter asks, "What is a Religious Belief?" and provides a very helpful introduction to Clouser's thought. Joe gives good reasons to reject the commonly held view that only those systems of thought that include a belief in one or many gods and/or induce worship-related activities are religious and illustrates how religious belief is inescapable even by the most ardent materialist.