Abstract
The text briefly deals with the inclusion of religion in the research agenda of social and cultural anthropology. Using the example of some medieval and early modern scholars (al-Birúní, Ibn Chaldún, Sahagún), it draws attention to the fact that the ethnographic method based on the physical presence of researchers in a particular social environment is not a matter of institutionally established anthropology in the early 20th century.
The second part of the article deals with some modern anthropological researches of religion and its main representatives (Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard) and shows that one of the diferences between them and older scholars is a major focus of the modern anthropologists on specific religious manifestation in a given society based on long-term field stay. In the final part of the text the author deals with some religious practices in contemporary modern societies and tries to answer partially the question why anthropologists have long avoided systematic study of these practices.