Geographers are concerned with the interaction between religion and the landscape. As one of the most important characteristics of culture, religion—the recognition of God as an object of worship, love and obedience—leaves a strong imprint on the natural environment.
Religion may be studied as a geographic process, with a point of origin, pattern of diffusion, and current distribution across the earth’s surface.
The relationship between physical environment and religion can also be studied. On the one hand, religious content may be derived from events in the physical environment; on the other hand, religious ideas underlie human transformation of the physical environment.
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Like other cultural characteristics, religion is a source of pride to the people, an identification of a distinct culture.
This intense identification with religion has led to conflicts between different religions and secular political organizations.
Religion may intimately affect all facets of a culture, directly or indirectly. Since religions are formalized views about the relation of the individual to this world and to the hereafter, each carries a distinct conception of the meaning and value of this life, and most contain strictures about what one must do to achieve salvation. These rules become interwoven with the traditions of a culture.
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For example, for Muslims, the observance of Shariat (law) is a necessary part of Islam, submission to Allah. In Judaism, the keeping of Torah, the Law of Moses, involves ritual and moral rules of holy living. For Hindus, the Dharma, or teaching, includes the complex laws.
The basic task of human geographers is to study the process by which religion, like other cultural characteristics, is diffused from one location and region to another, resulting in a distinctive spatial distribution.
The distribution of a particular religion is generated by process of spatial interaction, as religion is diffused from a point of origin in accordance with a distinctive pattern of communication networks.
The process of diffusion of a religion is important to geographers because it is a major force in the spread of cultural values.
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Apart from the process of diffusion of religion, the impact of religion on social and cultural practices is also an important area in which human and cultural geographers are exploring.
In the opinion of many social geographers, religious belief orthodoxy and conservatives’ may be taken as the indicators of cultural and socio-economic development.
The impact of religion upon landscape and resource management is quite significant. The historical and contemporary studies also prove that the economic impact of religion is enormous and the peoples of different faith and ethnicity living in the same environment are utilizing their resources differently.