This concept of transcendence, which means “to go beyond,” “to bridge” or “to cross over,” is a fundamental characteristic of all religious belief systems and a central element in every modern approach to defining religion. Transcendence creates the connection between the natural world and the supernatural, allowing man to pass through the limitations of his biological or physical state to the place of the divine. This place may be physical, as a temple or a church, or conceptual, as an image or principle—or both.

The concept of transcendence, which means “to go beyond” or “to cross over”, is a fundamental characteristic of all religious belief systems. It allows man to pass through the limitations of his physical state to a place of the divine.

The distinction between the divine or the supernatural and the physical world—between the “sacred” and the “profane"—is another fundamental characteristic of religious belief and an inherent concept in most definitions of religion. This separation is most obvious in religious rituals, customs and trappings that appear distinctly religious.

Soon other broader approaches to defining religion were developed that drew on the work of Schleiermacher but avoided the “reductive” method that focused so much on societal factors. Two of the most widely known exponents of this new approach, Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade, advocated defining religion in terms of how one experienced the sacred, an awareness of which they described as an intensely deep religious feeling. They focused more on the objects that individuals believed were sacred or endowed with supernatural power, whether an object, a person, an activity or a structure.