Description
There has long been a trend in religious studies that denies that religion can be an effective category for historians to use across time and cultures. In History and the Study of Religion Stanley Stowers takes on this assessment by demonstrating a theory of religion that answers the criticisms raised by those claiming that religion is not a useful concept. Drawing on his many years of researching and teaching the history of ancient Christianity in the context of the Mediterranean cultures, he offers a detailed and comprehensive account of how religion serves as a valuable, and even necessary, theory. Stowers argues that religion is a social kind, a real and relatively stable cross-cultural entity in the social world. Through key developments in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and social theory applied to examples from the ancient Mediterranean and ethnographic analyses, he illustrates the usefulness for creating social theory and historical explanation. The beginnings of Christianit
