The idea of epoch is borrowed from the philosophy of the German thinker Edmund Husserl (18591938), the father of phenomenology, and the procedure is regarded as central to the phenomenology of religion. For egalitarian theorists of religious freedom (as I call them), there is nothing special about religion as such. Some of these approaches focus on how to understand the beliefs and practices of particular religions, while some have more general concerns such as how religion relates to the nature of society, culture, human evolution, mind, and human behavior. Religious rituals are behaviors or practices that are either required or expected of the members of a particular group, such as bar mitzvah or confession of sins (Barkan and Greenwood 2003). These philosophical issues include, among many others, whether we can adequately prove the existence of God, reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a God who is wholly good and all-powerful, reconcile Gods omniscience (the power to know everything) and foreknowledge (the power to know future events) with human freedom, explain the nature of miracles, determine the meaningfulness of religious language (how religious linguistic expressions acquire their meanings), and many others. The belief in the soul as something separate from the body though residing in the body resulted from dealing with certain biological questions such as those concerning the difference between a living body and a dead one; the causes of waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death; and the origin of dreams and visions involving human images. For the last four decades universities and schools have been acting in response to a constant, steady demand for courses upon the study of religion. Sociology is one such approach that this essay will be looking at through its founding fathers Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is an academic field devoted to research into religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. According to a number of scholars (often influenced by Foucauldian or post-colonial thought), the category of religion is deeply implicated in the history and practice of western statism and imperialism. In Marrett's view, the first form of religion was a belief in an ever-present and ubiquitous force that gave power to all elements of life (Durkheim 203). develop an informed understanding of the diversity of world religions. Sociology studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. Anthropology of religion, on the other hand, explores the ways religious practices are embedded in specific forms of sociality, regimes of power, historical struggles, and modes of production (Lambek 2008, 5). It concerns itself with providing a critical analysis of historical writings describing a particular civilization, empire or society.Dominant power structures, political ideologies, personal biases, cultural trends and social norms steer narratives . Aurobindo did not just stick to an immanental experience of a divine being but that there must be transcendence within the individuals life which is seen in Auroville with a lived approach to ones faith rather like that which is common within Charismatic and Evangelical Churches. How a believer of a certain religion (an "insider") will study his/her own religion, for instance, will differ from how a nonbeliever of that religion (an "outsider") will study it.Their motivations and methods will be different. Smart contemplated these question for many years investigating various religions in the world. He is not final. For instance, a student of Christian theology is a Christian; but a student of religious studies studying Shintoism is usually not a Shintoist. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. First, the practice of religion involves inner experiences and sentiments, such as feelings of God guiding the life of the devotee. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. People often do truly unique things for their faith. This tradition goes back in modern times to the seminal work of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (180472), who proposed that God was the extension of human aspirations, and it is found in the work of the philosopher Karl Marx, the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and others. This suggests that the works of these thinkers cut across the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. O . Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UKEssays.com. As an academic discipline, anthropology studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and culture that decisively distinguish humans from other animal species. Anthropology has two major fields: physical anthropology, which studies the the origin, evolution, and diversity of people, and cultural anthropology, which studies culture in all of its aspects and uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography and ethnology, folklore, and linguistics in its descriptions and analyses of the diverse peoples of the world (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013). a complex continuum of resemblances and differences, Hindutva and the shared scripts of the global right, Normalizing nationalism through social media in transnational Jain communities. It studies religion in relation to other social institutions and compares religious beliefs and practices across cultures. The journal is a very significant endeavor since, until we launched it, there was no journal in the study of religion that has focused exclusively on developing a critical approach. The reflexive effect of the study of religion on religion itself may in practice make it more difficult for the student of religion to adopt the detachment required by bracketing. 3.Theology requires its learners to have some degree of faith whereas religious studies does not . But nor does it reduce the normative inscription of religion in the law to a narrow (often ethnocentric) set of concerns and values. St. Augustine used this theory to resolve the philosophical question, If everything comes from God, where does evil come from? According to him, evil exists in the world but it does not come from God, for what only comes from God is good. Copyright 2019 - 2022 Elcomblus Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Epistemology. Thus, some political ideologies, such as communism and fascism, have been regarded as analogous to religion. For putting the word "academic" in the phrase, "The Academic Study of Religion," indicates that . Even if an inventory of kinds of belief and practice could be gathered so as to provide a typical profile of what counts as religion, some scholars would maintain that the differences between religions are more significant than their similarities. We're here to answer any questions you have about our services. Rituals, practices and texts focused on death provide the basis for comparative study of Asian and Western religious approaches to the meaning and mystery of death as it confronts individuals and communities. Although there is still no agreement on this issue, the frontier between traditional religions and modern political ideologies remains a promising topic of study. This distinction depends to some extent upon taking a projectionist view of religion as a human product. This approach can be better understood in his ritual dimension, involvement with worshipping, meditations, pilgrimages, sacrifices and healing activities .Of course doctrinal and philosophical dimension is to be taken in consideration without living behind the experimental and emotional dimension and the important ethical and legal dimension. (a) The Polymethodic Approach Polymethodicality, according to Smart, is the fact that the scientific study of religion employs a variety of methods to study religion. Conversely, theological claims may imply something about the history of a religion. Durkheim further claimed that more complex societies had more complex religious systems, but they were all same in that they had religions as ways of unifying their societies. This can often lead to conflicts, including those that arise on religious grounds. The etymological meaning of the word theologybased on its Greek origin, namely theo, which means God, and logos which means discourse or study,is study of God. Theology, however, is not just limited to the study of the nature ofGod, for it also studies in a systematic way the main doctrines of a particular religion. Chapter 1 in the For our purposes, we shall examine certain approaches to the study of religions that are based on certain academic disciplines. Geographers study religions and their development based on the role that geography intersects with other important social components within a human geographic approach. Third, the secular separation between a privatized, individualized sphere of religion and a public, social, rational sphere of politics has obscured the way in which the state, the nation, and the law operate as the modern sacred. It is a rich concept that connects to vocabularies that bring persons and things, desires, and practices in particular traditions in distinctive ways. Nevertheless, common to all these different terms and their respective definitions of approach was the motivation to dispense with theologically orientated normative constructions in the study of religion. Such distinctions, however, only serve to shore up the arbitrary power that the state has to demarcate the sphere of its own sovereignty. In considering a religion, however, the scholar is concerned not only with individual responses but also with communal ones. 3 Phenomenological. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Secularism, on this view, transfers the individuals holy loyalties away from the church and towards the nation-state. As it happens, one group of influential political philosophers has tried to do just that. In the last quarter of the 20th century, four approaches to cultural studies drew growing attention. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives. The findings that focus on the scientific study of religion, including the SSSR and the SSR units within the AAR, are especially highlighted, as are contrasts between sociological and psychological approaches in the academic study of religion. From the plot summary, it is obvious that the film mainly focuses on the religion of Christianity. Sociology is one such approach that this essay will be looking at through its founding fathers Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. We've received widespread press coverage since 2003, Your UKEssays purchase is secure and we're rated 4.4/5 on reviews.co.uk. One of the significant sociological findings of Max Weber was the significant contribution of that the Calvinist religious ideas had on the development of the economic system of capitalism. The works of both Sri Aurobindo and Ninian Smart shows two drastic and completely different approaches to religion. The challenge is threefold: we must attend to the concerns of the critical religion school while, at the same time, be sensitive both to the lived reality of religious experience and belief, and to the protection of the normative ideals underpinning freedom of religion in the law. The study of religion can roughly be divided between descriptive and historical inquiries on the one hand and normative inquiries on the other. Items is a space for engagement with insights from the work of the Council and the social sciences. We can confirm that the method of study that Smart used in his approach comprehend both external and internal analysis of religion, characterized by phenomenological perspectives. They argue, for example, that exemptions from general laws can be justified on the ground of conscience; and that what the state should not establish are conceptions of the good. Others have no clear vision upon their religious identity and are searching possible traditions, ready to meet their spiritual exploration .So they start looking for different approaches to their study ,bringing along different opinions and whatever the process and methodology is, will bring them information from which eventually they will find answers or give opinion. It can use either separately or in any combination the methods of history, sociology, The author will attempt to evaluate the strengths and weakness of two approaches to religion and try to compare the work of the two representations and their methodology .The first is Professor Ninian Smart as he wrote widely, regarding different topics in religions, with papers and articles appearing in a vast range of . TTh 2:40-4:00. Normative inquiries primarily concern the truth of religious claims, the acceptability of religious values, and other such normative aspects; descriptive inquiries, which are only indirectly involved with the normative elements of religion, are primarily concerned with the history, structure, and other observable elements of religion. By criticizing religion, I mean not the critique of the beliefs or practices of self-described religious individuals or groups but rather the critique of the concept of religion as a scholarly category. These two neighboring countries have different legal systems and, of course, their own unique characteristics. The stress on the distinction between the descriptive and normative approaches is becoming more frequent among scholars of religion. And the best- known scholar of comparative religion of the last generation was Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), whose studies included the concepts of sacred space and mythic time, and the sacredness of nature (Paden 2005, 215). Method & Theory in the Study of Religion publishes articles, notes, book reviews and letters which explicitly address the problems of methodology and theory in the academic study of religion. I do not think it is, although I cannot make the full case here. To him, sacred meant extraordinarysomething that inspired wonder and that seemed connected to the concept of "the divine.". II. For instance, Christian theologians explain the doctrines of Christianity, and their works constitute Christian theology. Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified. The anthropological objection, baldly stated, claims that it is just not correct or helpful to say that religion only functions as a term associated with western imperialist and neo-colonialist projects. The belief in the soul as something separate from the body though residing in the body resulted from dealing with certain biological questions such as those concerning the difference between a living body and a dead one; the causes of waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death; and the origin of dreams and visions involving human images. "Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation", in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, Michael Banton (ed. Required fields are marked *. n account of the origins and functions of the Christian religion); while an external theory of religion is an account of the origins and functions of particular religions, or religion in general, using the methods of certain academic disciplines. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. They suggest that, even though historically the liberal state may have defined itself in relation to a problematic construal of religion, it has since broadened the scope of its moral concern, and is therefore less vulnerable to charges of ethnocentrism. Briefly, the arguments from causation and motion claim that the series of causes and effects, and movements in the world, must begin with God being the first cause and mover; the argument from design claims that the intricate design of the world cannot be attributed to mere chance but only to God as the divine intelligence; the argument from necessity claims that there must be a God who is a necessary being (one who has always been existing) to explain how contingent beings (those that presently exist but previously did not) have come to exist; and the argument from degrees of perfection claims that there must be a God whose perfection serves as the standard for determining the degrees of qualities that we attribute to things (like that they are good or better). There are doubts about how far there can be neutrality and objectivity in the study of religion. Each of these approaches can be applied to the study of religious diversity. As noted, there is a specific pedagogical Contact. It is the logic of Natures process. The study of the religious notions of primitive people arose within the context of evolutionary theory. Sociology in general looks at people's . The most influential proponent of comparative religion in the nineteenth century was Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900). Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? So neutrality, for liberals such as Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, is generalized non-establishment. Egalitarian theorists of religious freedom offer a compelling response to the critical religion school. Requires login ) objectivity in the nineteenth century was Friedrich Max Muller ( 1823-1900 ) often to. Not make the full case here relation to other social institutions and compares religious beliefs and practices across cultures to... Religion school important social components within a human product 're here to answer any questions have!, such as Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, is generalized non-establishment and them! 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