The Proper Study of Religion After Jonathan Z. Smith PDF Download

Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317491661
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Widely used as a primer, a text and a provocation to critical thinking, 'Studying Religion' aims to develop students' skills. The book clearly explains the methods and theories employed in the study of religion. Essays are offered on a range of topics: from the history and functions of religion to public discourse on religion and the classification of religions. The works of key scholars - from Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Otto to Mircea Eliade, James G. Frazer, and Sigmund Freud - are analysed and explored. 'Studying Religion' represents a shift away from the traditional focus of describing the exotic or curious religious 'Other' to an examination of how religious behaviours and institutions are studied. The book will be invaluable to students of religious studies.

Author: Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813930510
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay argues that, although the existence and significance of the science of religion has been barely visible to modern scholars of the Victorian period, it was a subject of lively and extensive debate among nineteenth-century readers and audiences. She shows how an earlier generation of scholars in Victorian Britain attempted to arrive at a dispassionate understanding of the psychological and social meanings of religious beliefs and practices—a topic not without contemporary resonance in a time when so many people feel both empowered and threatened by religious passion—and provides the kind of history she feels has been neglected. Wheeler-Barclay examines the lives and work of six scholars: Friedrich Max Müller, Edward B. Tylor, Andrew Lang, William Robertson Smith, James G. Frazer, and Jane Ellen Harrison. She illuminates their attempts to create a scholarly, non-apologetic study of religion and religions that drew upon several different disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, the classics, and Oriental studies, and relied upon contributions from those outside as well as within the universities. This intellectual enterprise—variously known as comparative religion, the history of religions, or the science of religion—was primarily focused on non-Christian religions. Yet in Wheeler-Barclay’s study of the history of this field within the broad contexts of Victorian cultural, intellectual, social, and political history, she traces the links between the emergence of the science of religion to debates about Christianity and to the history of British imperialism, the latter of which made possible the collection of so much of the ethnographic data on which the scholars relied and which legitimized exploration and conquest. Far from promoting an anti-religious or materialistic agenda, the science of religion opened up cultural space for an exploration of religion that was not constricted by the terms of contemporary conflicts over Darwin and the Bible and that made it possible to think in new and more flexible ways about the very definition of religion.

Author: Paul O. Myhre
Publisher: Anselm Academic Christian Brothers Pub.
ISBN: 9780884899761
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Filling the need for a clear, solid overview to introduction to religious studies courses, this text is neither too broad nor too narrow. Chapters explore what religion is and how it is formed and studied; religious experience; truth claims; ethics and moral theology; violence and religion; social involvement; religion and the environment; asceticism and mysticism; religion, technology, and science; religions and their words, stories, writings, and books; and more. The text respects cultural considerations and the contemporary global climate in showing religious studies in action and exploring questions of theory, method, and research. The contributing authors are in tune with college students' interests and are well suited to address the issues and methods of religious studies. Designed for college students taking their first course in the study of religion, such as introduction to religious studies and world religions.

Author: Sam D. Gill
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197527221
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
In The Proper Study of Religion, Sam Gill charts an innovative course of development for the academic study of religion by engaging the legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith, Gill's teacher and mentor for fifty years. Building on Smith's foundational legacy through creative encounters, Gill explores an extensive range of absorbing topics including: comparison as essential to academic technique and to human knowledge itself; play, philosophically understood, as a coredynamic of Smith's entire program; the relationship of academic document-based studies to the sensory-rich real world of religions; and self-moving as providing a biological and philosophical foundation on which to develop and expand upon a proper academic study of religion.

Author: Charles C. Haynes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780879861131
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description

Author: Gregory D. Alles
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113415271X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Drawing on recent developments in the comparative study of religion, this book explores the trends of the past sixty years from a global perspective. Each of the ten chapters covers the study of religion in a different region of the world, from Europe and the Americas to Asia and the Far East. Topics covered include: local background to the study of religions formation of religious studies in the region important thinkers and writings institutions interregional diversity and interregional connections emerging issues. This book is a major contribution to the field of religious studies and a valuable reference for scholars, researchers and graduate students.

Author: John Morreall
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405182466
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
This complete overview of religious studies provides students with the essential knowledge and tools they need to explore and understand the nature of religion. Covers the early development of religion, with overviews of major and minor religions from Islam to Scientology Considers recent developments including secularization; the relationship between religion and science; and scientific studies on religion, health, and mystical experience Uses humor throughout, allowing students to remain open-minded to the subject Explains what it means to study religion academically, and considers the impact of the study of religion on religion itself Contains numerous student-friendly features including photos, maps, time lines, side bars, historical profiles, and population distribution figures Provides classroom users with a lively website,www.wiley.com/go/religiontoolkit, including questions, quizzes, extra material, and helpful primary and secondary sources

Author: Walter H. Capps
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451419856
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Since its inception almost 200 years ago, the study of religion has informed, enlightened, provoked, and challenged our notions of humanity's deepest beliefs and longings. Now Walter Capps, nationally recognized for the quality and depth of his teaching, has written the first full-scale introduction to the history and methods of religious studies. To assess the many points of view in this mature but diffuse discipline. Capps uses the idea that four basic of fundamental questions and three enduring interests have given formal structure to the study of religion: the essence of religion; the origin of religion, descriptions of religion; the function of religion, the language of religion, comparisons of religion and, the future of religious studies. In this way Capps relates the chief insights and theories of philosophy, anthropology, phenomenology, sociology, and theology of religion, and spotlights theorists from Immanuel Kant to Mircea Eliade. His valuable text unites in a single narrative and conceptual framework the major methodological proposals for the academic study of religion; treats all the major theorists in their respective disciplines, schools of thought, and intellectual movements; treats the whole discipline as a dynamic and evolving tradition. Religious Studies constitutes not only an erudite introduction to the field, exhibiting vast scholarship and careful assessment, but also a bold synthetic proposal for its future.

Author: Robert S Ellwood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032471037
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Introducing students to engaging and contemporary topics such as sociology of religion, psychology of religion, history of religion, religion and art, religious ethics, popular religion, and religion and violence, this book continues to be fundamental reading for those approaching this subject area for the first time.

Author: Hillary Rodrigues
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367809010
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Why do people study religion? How have they studied it in the past? How do we study religion today? Is the academic study of religion the same as religious education? These and many other questions are addressed in this engaging introduction to the discipline of religious studies. Topics include: Definitions of religion Perspectives in the study and teaching of religion How religion began to be studied: Traditional perspectives--philosophical and theological How people experience religion: Perspectives in the study of religious consciousness and perception--phenomenological and psychological Studying religion within communities: Social and cultural perspectives--anthropological, sociological, political, and economic Judging religion: Critical perspectives--feminist approaches, the interaction of popular literature and religion Contextual perspectives--historical and comparative Themes, theories, and current directions This thoroughly updated second edition encourages students to think critically about the theories and methods presented. Students will find arguments for the strengths and limitations of these approaches, understand connections among religious studies and other intellectual movements, and develop their own ideas of how they might want to go about the study of religion. Summary boxes, discussion questions, a glossary, a chronology of key figures and texts, and other pedagogic aids help students grasp key concepts.