Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion

Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion

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  • Author: William E. Arnal
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317543955
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 270

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.


The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University

The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University

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  • Author: Donald Wiebe
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9781350103597
  • Category : Electronic books
  • Languages : en
  • Pages :

"In this book, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion: that colleges and universities in North America offer an almost exclusively theological account of religion. 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 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"--


The Proper Study of Religion After Jonathan Z. Smith

The Proper Study of Religion After Jonathan Z. Smith

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

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.


Critical Thinking and the Academic Study of Religion

Critical Thinking and the Academic Study of Religion

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  • Author: Richard Penaskovic
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Critical thinking
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 212

This work responds to a renewed emphasis on teaching in the academy. Written from the perspective of a classroom teacher, it is a practical application of the principles behind the Critical Thinking movement to the study of religion. Emphasizing that the acquisition of critical thinking depends less on what is taught than on how it is taught, the author presents concrete examples from his own experience to illustrate a student centered approach to teaching. By demonstrating how the study of religion contributes to the development of critical thinking - through the acquisition of problem-solving, decision-making, and metacognitive skills - Penaskovic suggests its value to a broader liberal arts curriculum as well. Both a theoretical review of Critical Thinking and a "nuts-and-bolts" manual on how it can be used and assessed in the classroom, this work will challenge new and veteran teachers alike to re-examine and renew what they do in the classroom. The book includes a selected, annotated bibliography on Critical Thinking. Every teacher of religion will want to read this book.


The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion

The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion

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  • Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
  • Publisher: A&C Black
  • ISBN: 1441115781
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 416

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.


The Academic Study of Religion

The Academic Study of Religion

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  • Author: American Academy of Religion. Academic Study of Religion Section
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Public schools
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 150


Method as Identity

Method as Identity

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  • Author: Christopher M. Driscoll
  • Publisher: Lexington Books
  • ISBN: 1498565638
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 264

Method as Identity considers how social identity shapes methodological standpoints. With a refreshing hip hop sensibility, Miller and Driscoll reorient the contemporary academic study of religion toward recognition of the costs and benefits of manufacturing “critical” distance from our objects of study.


The Sacred and Its Scholars

The Sacred and Its Scholars

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  • Author: Thomas A. Idinopulos
  • Publisher: BRILL
  • ISBN: 9789004106239
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 214

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.


Conversations and Controversies in the Scientific Study of Religion

Conversations and Controversies in the Scientific Study of Religion

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  • Author:
  • Publisher: BRILL
  • ISBN: 9004310452
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 361

This collection of essays provides scholars in the study of religion occasion to discuss the theoretical and methodological issues raised, to debate and expand upon them, or, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, even to refute the arguments made.


The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher

The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher

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  • Author:
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0192584960
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 717

Schleiermacher is now regarded as an influential figure in the history of Christian thought, theories and methods in religious studies, and hermeneutics. The German-language critical edition of his work beginning in 1980, Schleiermacher Kritische Gesamtausgabe, and English translations of key portions of his corpus beginning in the late nineteenth century, have allowed scholars to investigate the richness of his thought. German scholars have often focused on Schleiermacher's ties to early modern philosophy, his aesthetics, hermeneutics, and theory of religion, while English-speaking scholars have often focused on the theological influences and implications of Schleiermacher's work. Over the last 30 years, both German and Anglophone scholars have been at work translating and analyzing key texts. This Handbook gathers authoritative interpretations of Schleiermacher's work from both German and English-speaking scholars, bringing together the best that Schleiermacher scholarship has to offer. The chapters are divided into three parts. The first part offers a clear and nuanced understanding of Schleiermacher's own historical and intellectual context. The second part presents a close analysis of the structure and content of Schleiermacher's thought, in relation both to questions of method and particular theological themes and to broader inquiries in philosophy and the humanities. The third part provides an examination of the reception of his thought and of its contemporary implications for theology and the study of religion.