Download or read book Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion written by William E. Arnal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion presents a provocative critique of the unwillingness of modern scholars to publically distinguish research into comparative religion from confessional studies written within denominationally-affiliated institutions. The book offers the 19th Century founders of the study of religion as a bracing corrective to contemporary timidity. The issue was analysed and documented by Wiebe a quarter of a century ago. Here, marking Wiebe's work, a wide range of contributors reassess the methodology and ambition of contemporary religious research. The book argues that conceptualizing religion as part of the world of human action and experience is the first requirement of the study of religion.

Download or read book The Insider Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion written by Russell T. McCutcheon and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1999-01-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty classic and contemporary readings - from such writers as Kant, Hume, Schleiermacher, and Otto, to Ninian Smart, Mircea Eliade, Karen McCarthy-Brown, and Wendy Doniger.

Download or read book The Question of Methodological Naturalism written by Jason N. Blum and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditions and institutions that we call religions abound with references to the supernatural: ancestral spirits, karma, the afterlife, miracles, revelation, deities, etc. How are students of religion to approach the behaviors, doctrines, and beliefs that refer to such phenomena, which by their very nature are supposed to defy the methods of empirical research and the theories of historical scholarship? That is the question of methodological naturalism. The Question of Methodological Naturalism offers ten thoughtful engagements with that perennial question for the academic study of religion. Contributors include established senior scholars and newer voices propounding a range of perspectives, resulting in both surprising points of convergence and irreconcilable differences in how our shared discipline should be conceptualized and practiced.

Download or read book The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University written by Donald Wiebe and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these essays, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion in colleges and universities in North America and Europe - that studies almost always exhibit a religious bias. To explore this issue, Wiebe looks at the religious and moral agendas behind the study of religion, showing that the boundaries between the objective study of religion and religious education as a tool for bettering society have become blurred. As a result, he argues, religious studies departments have fostered an environment where religion has become a learned or scholarly practice, rather than the object of academic scrutiny. This book provides a critical history of the failure of 20th- and 21st-century scholars to follow through on the 19th-century ideal of an objective scientific study of religious thought and behaviour. Although emancipated from direct ecclesiastical control and, to some extent, from sectarian theologizing, Wiebe argues that research and scholarship in the academic department of religious studies has failed to break free from religious constraints. He shows that an objective scientific study of religious thought and practice is not only possible, but the only appropriate approach to the study of religious phenomena.

Download or read book Reductionism written by Richard H. Jones and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reductionism's approach brings together many of the most interesting questions today in philosophy (consciousness and computers) and in science (issues of complexity and self-organization). It also presents a brief history of how reductionism has developed in Western philosophy and religion, with reference to Indian philosophy on certain issues.

Download or read book Jonathan Z Smith on Religion written by Christopher I. Lehrich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Z. Smith (1938–2017) was unquestionably one of the most important and influential voices of critical reflection within the academic study of religion in the last century. His work explored the nature and history of religious phenomena across cultures—from ancient Jewish practices to Maori cults, from early Christianity to mass suicide in the twentieth century—while critiquing the assumptions underlying the very category of "religion." This important volume offers the first full critical assessment of the influence of Jonathan Z. Smith’s thought on the subject of religion. Christopher I. Lehrich systematically examines and develops a critical overview that will assist others in engaging more fully with Smith’s scholarship. This book is an essential reading for students and scholars interested in the work of Jonathan Z. Smith as well as the history of religion more broadly.

Download or read book The Sacred and Its Scholars written by Thomas A. Idinopulos and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1996 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays is devoted to a careful examination of the importance of methodology in the study of primary religious data. The essays focus on the 'Sacred' as an ultimate object of descriptive analysis and critical scrutiny on the part of a select number of North American and European methodologists in the study and teaching of the history of religions and its allied disciplines. The central question to which the contributors respond are these: What is the Sacred? Is it a being or a concept of a being; is it a mental state or an objective reality or something else entirely? Can the Sacred be described as an empirical fact, or as a formal rule for religious inquiry? If the Sacred is a valid category in the study and teaching of religion, then what can be said about the antithesis of the sacred, namely the profane or the secular? This volume probes these questions with great care in order to justify a number of ways the Sacred can be construed as an indispensable notion for the study and teaching of religion.

Download or read book Beyond Phenomenology written by Gavin Flood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1999-08-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the understanding and explanation of religion is always historically contingent. Grounded in the work of Bakhtin and Ricoeur, Flood positions the academic study of religion within contemporary debates in the social sciences and humanities concerning modernity and postmodernity, particularly contested issues regarding truth and knowledge. It challenges the view that religions are privileged, epistemic objects, argues for the importance of metatheory, and presents an argument for the dialogical nature of inquiry. The study of religion should begin with language and culture, and this shift in emphasis to the philosophy of the sign in hermeneutics and away from the philosophy of consciousness in phenomenology has far-reaching implications. It means a new ethic of practice which is sensitive to the power relationship in any epistemology; it opens the door to feminist and postcolonial critique, and it provides a methodology which allows for the interface between religious studies, theology, and the social sciences.

Download or read book The Study of Greek and Roman Religions written by Nickolas P. Roubekas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should ancient religious ideas be approached? Is "religion" an applicable term to antiquity? Should classicists, ancient historians, and religious studies scholars work more closely together? Nickolas P. Roubekas argues that there is a disciplinary gap between the study of Greek and Roman religions and the study of “religion” as a category-a gap that has often resulted in contradictory conclusions regarding Greek and Roman religion. This book addresses this lack of interdisciplinarity by providing an overview, criticism, and assessment of this chasm. It provides a theoretical approach to this historical period, raising the issue of the relationship between “theory of religion” and “history of religion,” and explores how history influences theory and vice versa. It also presents an in-depth critique of some crucial problems that have been central to the discussions of scholars who work on Graeco-Roman antiquity, encouraging us to re-examine how we approach the study of ancient religions.

Download or read book Theology and Star Trek written by Shaun C. Brown and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-22 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Star Trek: Enterprise concluded in 2005, Star Trek went on hiatus until the 2009 film Star Trek and its sequels. With the success of these films, Star Trek returned to the small screen with series like Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds. These films and series, in different ways, reflect cultural shifts in Western society. Theology and Star Trek gathers a group of scholars from various religious and theological disciplines to reflect upon the connection between theology and Star Trek anew. The essays in part one, “These are the Voyages,” explore the overarching themes of Star Trek and the thought of its creator, Gene Roddenberry. Part two, “Strange New Worlds,” discusses politics and technology. Part three, “To Explore and to Seek,” focuses on issues related to practice and formation. Part four, “To Boldly Go,” contemplates the future of Star Trek.

Download or read book From Seminary to University written by Aaron Hughes and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first historical examination of the study of religion in Canada. While secular departments of religious studies would not emerge in Canada until the late 1960s, the teaching of religion under the guise of divinity, theology, the Bible, and moral philosophy has been omnipresent for much of the country’s history. The gradual transformation from the teaching of religious truths at denominational theological colleges to the non-denominational and secular study of religion at universities was a lengthy and complicated one. From Seminary to University examines this transformation against a much broader backdrop. It is not simply the history of individual departments scattered across the nation. Instead, the story reveals the many non-academic forces that made those departments possible, such as the creation of the United Church of Canada, the adoption of multiculturalism, and the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In recounting this transformation, From Seminary to University illuminates an important part of Canadian history.

Download or read book Method as Identity written by Christopher M. Driscoll and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion emphasizes the inexorable influence that social identities exert in shaping methodological choices within the academic study of religion, as witnessed in sui generis appeals to particularity and reliance on (or rejection of) identity-based standpoints. Can data speak back, and if so, would scholars have ears to listen? With a refreshing hip hop sensibility, Miller and Driscoll argue that what cultural theorist Jean-François Bayart refers to as a “battle for identity” forces a necessary confrontation with the (impact of) social identities (and, their histories) haunting our fields of study. These complex categorical specters make it nearly impossible to untether the categories of identity that we come to study from the identity of categories shaping our methodological lenses. Treating method as an identity-revealing technique of distance-making between the “proper” scholar and the less-than-scholarly advocate for religion, Miller and Driscoll examine a variety of discursive milieus of vagueness (consider for instance “essentialism,” “origins,” “authenticity”) at work in the contemporary discussion of “critical” methods that lack the necessary specificity for doing the heavy-lifting of analytically handling the asymmetrical dimensions of power part and parcel to social identification. Through interdisciplinary discussions that draw on thinkers including Charles H Long, Bruce Lincoln, Russell T. McCutcheon, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, C. Wright Mills, Laurel C. Schneider, William D. Hart, Tomoko Masuzawa, Anthony B. Pinn, bell hooks, Roderick Ferguson, John L. Jackson, Jasbir Puar, and Jean-François Bayart, among others, Method as Identity intentionally blurs the lines classifying “proper” scholarly approach and proper “objects” of study. With an intentional effort to challenge the de facto disciplinary segregation marking the field and study of religion today, Method as Identity will be of interest to scholars involved in discussions about theory and method for the study of religion, and especially researchers working at the intersections of identity, difference, and classification—and the politics thereof.

Download or read book The Ideology of Religious Studies written by Timothy Fitzgerald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-16 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years there has been an intensifying debate within the religious studies community about the validity of religion as an analytical category. In this book Fitzgerald sides with those who argue that the concept of religion itself should be abandoned. On the basis of his own research in India and Japan, and through a detailed analysis of the use of religion in a wide range of scholarly texts, the author maintains that the comparative study of religion is really a form of liberal ecumenical theology. By pretending to be a science, religion significantly distorts socio-cultural analysis. He suggest, however, that religious studies can be re-represented in a way which opens up new and productive theoretical connections with anthropology and cultural and literary studies.

Download or read book A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion written by James Cox and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-08-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an introduction and overview to the Phenomenology of Religion through describing, analysing and evaluating the ideas of key thinkers in the phenomenology of religion. This book also examines the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American 'schools' of religious phenomenology.

Download or read book Sincerely Held written by Charles McCrary and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-04-08 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel account of the relationship between sincerity, religious freedom, and the secular in the United States. “Sincerely held religious belief” is now a common phrase in discussions of American religious freedom, from opinions handed down by the US Supreme Court to local controversies. The “sincerity test” of religious belief has become a cornerstone of US jurisprudence, framing what counts as legitimate grounds for First Amendment claims in the eyes of the law. In Sincerely Held, Charles McCrary provides an original account of how sincerely held religious belief became the primary standard for determining what legally counts as authentic religion. McCrary skillfully traces the interlocking histories of American sincerity, religion, and secularism starting in the mid-nineteenth century. He analyzes a diverse archive, including Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man, vice-suppressing police, Spiritualist women accused of being fortune-tellers, eclectic conscientious objectors, secularization theorists, Black revolutionaries, and anti-LGBTQ litigants. Across this history, McCrary reveals how sincerity and sincerely held religious belief developed as technologies of secular governance, determining what does and doesn’t entitle a person to receive protections from the state. This fresh analysis of secularism in the United States invites further reflection on the role of sincerity in public life and religious studies scholarship, asking why sincerity has come to matter so much in a supposedly “post-truth” era.

Download or read book After World Religions written by Christopher R Cotter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World Religions Paradigm has been the subject of critique and controversy in Religious Studies for many years. After World Religions provides a rationale for overhauling the World Religions curriculum, as well as a roadmap for doing so. The volume offers concise and practical introductions to cutting-edge Religious Studies method and theory, introducing a wide range of pedagogical situations and innovative solutions. An international team of scholars addresses the challenges presented in their different departmental, institutional, and geographical contexts. Instructors developing syllabi will find supplementary reading lists and specific suggestions to help guide their teaching. Students at all levels will find the book an invaluable entry point into an area of ongoing scholarly debate.

Download or read book The Science of Religion A Defence written by Donald Wiebe and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald Wiebe, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Trinity College, University of Toronto, has spent much of his academic career arguing for a clear demarcation between Theology and Religious Studies. The Science of Religion: A Defence offers a brilliant overview of Professor Wiebe's contributions on methodology in the academic study of religion, of the development of his thinking over time, and of his intellectual commitment to 'a science of religion'. The work is divided into three parts. The first part identifies pertinent connections between 'religion', 'religious studies', and 'science' and why 'reductionism' in the academic study of religion, when properly applied, can bridge the explanatory gap between the sceptic and the devotee. The second part treats conceptual debates in the academic study of religion, with particular reference to the place of 'belief', 'understanding', and 'meaning' in the modern study of religion. The third part addresses the theological resistance to the scientific study of religion and how that resistance can be overcome. Finally, two new essays are included: a critique on ‘The Preconceptions of a Science of Religion’ by Anthony J. Palma, and an accompanying reply by Donald Wiebe. The Science of Religion: A Defence is an essential resource for both scholarly and non-scholarly audiences alike, and will be of particular interest to both defenders and critics of a scientific study of religion.