Understanding theories of religion : an introduction / Ivan Strenski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Strenski, Ivan, author.

Standardized Title:

Thinking about religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion--Methodology.

Religion.

Physical Description:

ix, 268 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Chichester, West Sussex : Wiley Blackwell, 2015.

Summary:

Understanding Theories of Religion explores the core methods and theorists in religion through the works of classic and contemporary figures from the history of anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. It offers a comprehensive study of the development of theories of religion, spanning the classics of early modern and Enlightenment Europe to modern theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and through to post-modem theories of religion and the latest theoretical trends. This second-edition expands coverage of religious theories from the 1960s through to the present day, exploring topics including religion and post-modernism; race, sex, and gender; and religion and post-colonialism. Updated throughout, the book offers illuminating insights into the questions that challenged various theorists, and how their successors then adapted and built upon their ideas. By integrating both critical and historical approaches, it reveals how the study of religion evolved in response to great cultural conflicts and major historical events. Individual chapters address the theory attached to a significant individual or school, and reveal how these ideas and methods were then brought into the study of religion. Offering at fresh perspective to conventional approaches which often seek only to demonstrate why theorists were-wrong this expanded new edition of Understanding Theories of Religion seeks to press the question of why these theorists so deeply believed that they were right. Book jacket.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Revised editon of Thinking about religion / Ivan Strenski. 2006.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Strenski, Ivan. Understanding theories of religion

ISBN:

9781444330847

1444330845

OCLC:

886381213