Description
Book SynopsisThis book, a guide to studying religion, has two parts. The first or historical part traces the rise of the academic study of religion from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Primary attention is given to the relation of studying religion to Romanticism and to its contrary relations to principal characteristics of Western modernity, especially its rational and materialist emphases. The second part of the book addresses matters that present uncertainties, problems, and even tensions within the field, such as, what is or should be meant by referring to some persons or groups as religious, why religion is so often a cause of tensions and even conflicts both within and between religious groups and between them and the increasingly nonreligious or secular quality of modern Western culture, and the problem that arises for the field by reason of scholars who, on one side, are themselves religious and who, on the other side, are nonreligious or secular. The book places this final difficulty, the difference and often the tension between religious and nonreligious approaches to the study of religion, in the role of a unifying theme of the book and offers a way by which this problem can be addressed and to a considerable degree reduced.
Table of ContentsPreface; Introduction; Part One: Historical; 1. Modernity, Romanticism, and the Rise of Religious Studies; 2. Studying Religion and Cultural Faults Caused by Repression and Neglect; 3. Studying Religion and the Lack of Cultural Accesses to Needed Intangibles; 4. Studying Religion and the Cultural Need for More Adequate Worldviews; Part Two: Theoretical; 5. The Object of Religious Studies;6. The Position of the Person Studying Religion; 7. Taking into Account Religion’s Excesses and Complexities; 8. Studying Religion while Being Religious; Conclusion; Index
