There is no Western concept of Religion.

There is currently a copious academic availability cascade whose premise is that countries like Japan had no concept of what we understand by the term Religion prior to contact with the West.

By contrast, a far more plausible claim is that the West did not and doesn't have a concept of Religion because it forgot or abandoned, as false or delusive, anything indigenous or spontaneously occurring that might come under that rubric, preferring to, by an act of faith, not reason, assert that it had come into possession of something non-Western which, even if it really were only a concept, nevertheless could not be possessed as such, because the thing was constituted by its claim to be something the very opposite of conceptual and only 'multiply realizable' by a Divine Act of Grace. In other words there is no possible interpretation of the word 'concept' such that the West (as the term is commonly used) could claim to have, or have had, a self certifiable concept of Religion.

Let us suppose that you have a concept of something iff you have a 'mental representation' of it and this mental representation enables you to do certain things- e.g. draw valid inferences, make meaningful distinctions, and participate in a discourse to which Public Justification theory or Evidentiary Decision theory is relevant.
Then, clearly, the West does not have a concept of Religion because of its own mental representation of 'concept' as something not constituted by a leap of faith.
A Jew or a Brahmin or a Sayyad may posit a genealogical episteme, based on likelihood of descent from a Prophet or Rishi into his or her imperative concept of Religion so as to permit an evidentiary decision theory type justification of his or her own chosen degree of orthopraxy or orthodoxy, but a 'Westerner' has no similar recourse save by telling what are now known to be blatant and stupid  lies.

What happens if we think of concepts as not 'mental representations' but platonic objects? Surely there is a way- Hegel's- to say that the West does have, indeed has in a superlative degree, a concept of Religion? But this just cashes out as telling very very stupid, very very obvious and blatant lies while pretending to care deeply about Humanity and Culture and Art and Philosophy while vomiting and shitting all over everything. Ultimately, in addition to blind faith, you now need to be a thorough going Racist and Sexist and hater of Working Class people.

Fuck. Just described myself. You all know the story of how my parents were racist towards me and my ex-wife sexually abused me, but what, you may wonder, has turned me against the working class?
The answer is those fuckers make too much noise going about their work when I'm trying to nurse a hangover.

I guess, though there is no Western concept of Religion, yet there is me. I'm the Western concept of Religion- fat, ugly, stupid but also impotent to do much Evil. And  hung fucking over. So don't slam the door as you hurriedly exit this website.
Mind it kindly
Aiyayo.