What is the Difference Between Superstition and Religion

Many decades ago I was invited for the first time to speak at the Unitarian Church in Fargo. I've spoken there since as well as in half a dozen others. That first time exposed me to conversations with avoid non believers, a new experience at that time in my life. 

Chatting with people at coffee afterwards the conversation drifted into a critique of the Christian faith and those who worship in it. Some made light of its invisible god, sin, life after death, etc. A professorial fellow shrugged and said, "Superstitions. That's all they are, superstitions." I had never heard the tenets of Christianity referred to as superstitions. That remark put me on a life-long search for the difference between religious convictions and superstitions. 

People within Christianity or any other religion have no trouble discerning the difference. For those of us outside religion there remains no simple way of separating them.

I'm reading a wonderful book, Wondering in Strange Lands. The black author grew up in New Jersey and noticed certain beliefs, prejudices, fears and attitudes in her black family. She asked her mother where these beliefs came from? Her mother blew off the question by saying, "It's what we black people believe." 

The author grew up in Pentecostalism. It is defined by baptism, speaking in tongues and divine healing. Her family frowned on superstition. But when someone changed apartments, there was a ceremony of spraying scented olive oil around the new place. This drove out the spirits and energies of the previous occupant. An owl perched outside her mother's house--it was a bad omen. When someone died in the house windows were opened to let the spirits out. 

The author traveled to rural Georgia where her ancestors lived before the great migration north after the civil war. She learned slave traders raided parts of Africa where individual tribes had lived since the early human beings. Boat loads of tribal members landed as slaves in different parts of the South and maintained their cultures for 2-300 years. Most migrated together north and settled together in specific cities. Religious beliefs came with them as well as the view that other beliefs from Africa are superstitions.  

One dictionary definition of superstition is, "Excessively credulous belief in and reverence for supernatural beings."

The Unitarian member years ago did not see a difference between the rituals brought over from Africa and those in Christianity, baptism, prayer and communion. Differentiation of the two remains a work in progress.