Fandom has every feature by which a religion is recognised

The argument

Proponents of this position start from how religions are actually identified rather than from how they are defined. A religion is rarely picked out by a single doctrine; it is recognised by a cluster of features. There is regular gathering at appointed times. There is a building treated as set apart, entered with a particular feeling and spoken of as hallowed ground. There is costume that marks membership and song performed in unison by people who otherwise have nothing in common. There are relics, shrines and the honoured dead. There is an origin story retold to children, a lineage of heroes, a calendar of festivals that gives the year its shape, and rites by which the young are brought in. On this account, supporting a club satisfies the whole cluster and not merely part of it. The ground is sacred space, the fixture list is a liturgical calendar, the chants are hymns learned by heart, the shirt is vestment, and the retelling of famous victories is scripture in the strict sense of a story a community holds in common and does not permit to be forgotten. Proponents stress that the devotion is not ironic: supporters arrange their travel, their week and their moods around it, hand it on to their children, and grieve over it. The argument concludes that if the same cluster would be enough to call an unfamiliar practice a religion when met with in another culture, consistency requires calling fandom one here. Refusing to do so, proponents suggest, is not an observation about fandom but a protective instinct about religion: the word is being reserved for the practices a society already honours, rather than applied to whatever fits the description.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents reply that a cluster of outward features is the least important thing about a religion. What the cluster is organised around in a religion is a claim about reality and a duty that follows from it, and fandom has neither: no supporter holds that the club made the world or that a defeat carries a moral verdict on their life. On this view the resemblance is a resemblance of form only, which is why the comparison is almost always offered as a metaphor and understood as one.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The cluster is assembled after the fact from practices already agreed to be religions, and it is drawn wide enough to catch armies, schools, political movements and national ceremonies. A test that classifies all of those as religions is not identifying religions. [Rejecting P2] The cluster is satisfied only by loosening each item until it fits: a ground is called sacred where nobody treats it as holy, chants are called hymns where nothing is being addressed, and a shirt is called vestment where it is merchandise. [Rejecting C] Consistency cuts the other way. If the unfamiliar practice were examined as closely as fandom is, what would be looked for is what its participants take to be true, and on that question fandom gives an answer no religion gives.