Final answer:
Religion serves as an important social institution that meets fundamental societal needs including offering emotional comfort, creating a place for social interaction, and enforcing social norms and control.
Step-by-step explanation:
As a social institution, religion helps a society meet its basic needs such as providing answers to spiritual mysteries, offering emotional comfort, and creating a place for social interaction and control. Religion serves as an avenue for socialization, teaching participants how to interact with both the material culture of the religion, such as sacred objects and rites, and the community's practices that encompass belief systems and societal values. In every culture, religious institutions, from churches and mosques to temples and synagogues, function as places where members of a community come to worship, learn, and reinforce shared social norms, thereby fostering a sense of group cohesion and companionship. Furthermore, religion can define social behaviors and norms, contributing to the regulation of social control through various rituals and ceremonies.