Description
Book SynopsisFeaturing comprehensive updates and additions, the second edition of Understanding Theories of Religion explores the development of major theories of religion through the works of classic and contemporary figures.
A new edition of this introductory text exploring the core methods and theorists in religion, spanning the sixteenth-century through to the latest theoretical trends
Features an entirely new section covering religion and postmodernism; race, sex, and gender; and religion and postcolonialism
Examines the development of religious theories through the work of classic and contemporary figures from the history of anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology
Reveals how the study of religion evolved in response to great cultural conflicts and major historical events
Student-friendly features include chapter introductions and summaries, biographical vignettes, a timeline, a glossary, and many other learning aids
Table of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition: Understanding, Instead of Just Thinking vii
1 Introduction: Understanding Theories of Religion is Better than Just Being Critical 1
Part I The Prehistory of the Study of Religion: Responses to an Expanding World 7
2 Jean Bodin and Herbert of Cherbury: True Religion, Essential Religion, and Natural Religion 9
3 Understanding Religion Also Began with Trying to Understand the Bible 19
Part II Classic Nineteenth-Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: The Quest for the Origins of Religion in History 31
4 Max Müller, the Comparative Study of Religion, and the Search for Other Bibles in India 33
5 The Shock of the “Savage”: Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution, and Spirits 45
6 The Religion of the Bible Evolves: William Robertson Smith 55
7 Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer 65
Part III Classic Twentieth-Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: Defending the Inner Sanctum of Religious Experience or Storming It 75
8 Understanding How to Understand Religion: “Phenomenology of Religion” 77
9 How Religious Experience Created Capitalism: Max Weber 93
10 Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion 106
11 Bronislaw Malinowski and the “Sublime Folly” of Religion 118
12 Seeing God with the Social Eye: Durkheim’s Religious Sociology 129
13 Mircea Eliade: Turning Back the “Worm of Doubt” 142
Part IV Liberation and Post-Modernism: Race, Gender, Post-Colonialism, the Discourse on Power 155
14 From Modernism to Post-Modernism: Mostly Michel Foucault 157
15 Theorizing Religion with Race in Mind: Prophecy or Curiosity? 171
16 Sex/Gender and Women: Feminists Theorizing Religion 189
17 Another “Otherness”: Post-Colonial Theories of Religion 216
18 Conclusion: Being “Smart” about Bringing “Religion” Back In 241
Index 254
