Religion is not an actor, not a force. It is a field where human action takes place, just like the fields of economics, politics, arts, sports, education or the media where human action takes place. At those fields, human action is organized by common patterns of internal, psychological processes and externally observable behavior.
For want of better terms, some call those two common patterns culture and behavior. If we adopt those terms, we can say that culture and behavior influence each other in individual people and in more or less recognizable systems.
Systems of cultural and behavioral interaction change over time, often or in the end with interaction between such systems as well. Then it may seem that, for instance, changing religious behaviors also create behavioral changes at other fields of society.
But behavioral patterns do not change behavioral patterns directly, they do that through culture. Culture remains to be the medium. Behaviors change culture, culture changes behaviors and so on.
Such systems of ongoing causation happen at any field in society, including at the field of religion. Just like at other fields, the field of religion has a system of culture and behavior.
Systems of culture and behavior can have internal patterns of ongoing causation but usually interact with other parts of the entire society.
To add, common patterns of behavior are not only shaped by culture, but also by contacts with neighboring societies, by genes and by such physical influences as the types of available food, the weather, the sun and the moon.
Another important caveat here is to notice that social life does not consist of closed systems. More less recognizable systems have gradual overlaps, openings and lose ends. And there is a vast variety of individual action. Finally, there are the individual, subjective outlooks and experiences.
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