The Ideology of Religious Studies

The Ideology of Religious Studies PDF Author: Timothy Fitzgerald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195347153
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
In recent years there has been an intensifying debate within the religious studies community about the validity of religion as an analytical category. In this book Fitzgerald sides with those who argue that the concept of religion itself should be abandoned. On the basis of his own research in India and Japan, and through a detailed analysis of the use of religion in a wide range of scholarly texts, the author maintains that the comparative study of religion is really a form of liberal ecumenical theology. By pretending to be a science, religion significantly distorts socio-cultural analysis. He suggest, however, that religious studies can be re-represented in a way which opens up new and productive theoretical connections with anthropology and cultural and literary studies.

The Ideology of Religious Studies

The Ideology of Religious Studies PDF Author: Timothy Fitzgerald
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195167694
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
In recent years there has been an intensifying debate within the religious studies community about the validity of religion as an analytical category. In this book Fitzgerald sides with those who argue that the concept of religion itself should be abandoned. On the basis of his own research in India and Japan, and through a detailed analysis of the use of religion in a wide range of scholarly texts, the author maintains that the comparative study of religion is really a form of liberal ecumenical theology. By pretending to be a science, religion significantly distorts socio-cultural analysis. He suggest, however, that religious studies can be re-represented in a way which opens up new and productive theoretical connections with anthropology and cultural and literary studies.

The Ideology of Religious Studies

The Ideology of Religious Studies PDF Author: Timothy Fitzgerald
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780197739556
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Arguing that the concept of religion should be abandoned, Fitzgerald maintains that the so-called study of religions is really a barely disguised form of liberal ecumenical theology, on the basis of his own research in Japan and India.

After World Religions

After World Religions PDF Author: Christopher R Cotter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317419952
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
The World Religions Paradigm has been the subject of critique and controversy in Religious Studies for many years. After World Religions provides a rationale for overhauling the World Religions curriculum, as well as a roadmap for doing so. The volume offers concise and practical introductions to cutting-edge Religious Studies method and theory, introducing a wide range of pedagogical situations and innovative solutions. An international team of scholars addresses the challenges presented in their different departmental, institutional, and geographical contexts. Instructors developing syllabi will find supplementary reading lists and specific suggestions to help guide their teaching. Students at all levels will find the book an invaluable entry point into an area of ongoing scholarly debate.

Politics, Theology and History

Politics, Theology and History PDF Author: Raymond Plant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521438810
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
This book examines the moral foundations of liberal societies through the role of Christian belief in public policy.

Religion as Magical Ideology

Religion as Magical Ideology PDF Author: Konrad Talmont-Kaminski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317544730
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
'Religion as Magical Ideology' examines the relationship between rationality and supernatural beliefs arguing that such beliefs are products of evolution, cognition and culture. The book does not offer a false rapprochement between reason and religion; instead, it explores their interrelationship as a series of complex adaptations between cognitive and cultural processes. Exploring the nature of the tension between religious traditions and reason, 'Religion as Magical Ideology' develops a dual inheritance theory of religion - which combines the cognitive byproduct and prosocial adaptation accounts - and analyses the connection between the function of a belief and the degree of protection it gets from potential counter-evidence. With discussion ranging from individual cognitive mechanisms, general functional considerations, to the limits of evolutionary and cognitive processes, the book offers readers a systematic account of how cognition shapes religious beliefs and practices.

Religion and Ideology in Assyria

Religion and Ideology in Assyria PDF Author: Beate Pongratz-Leisten
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614514267
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Book Description
Addressing the relationship between religion and ideology, and drawing on a range of literary, ritual, and visual sources, this book reconstructs the cultural discourse of Assyria from the third through the first millennium BCE. Ideology is delineated here as a subdiscourse of religion rather than as an independent category, anchoring it firmly within the religious world view. Tracing Assur's cultural interaction with the south on the one hand, and with the Syro-Anatolian horizon on the other, this volume articulates a "northern" cultural discourse that, even while interacting with southern Mesopotamian tradition, managed to maintain its own identity. It also follows the development of tropes and iconic images from the first city state of Uruk and their mouvance between myth, image, and royal inscription, historiography and myth, and myth and ritual, suggesting that, with the help of scholars, key royal figures were responsible for introducing new directions for the ideological discourse and for promoting new forms of historiography.

Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy

Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy PDF Author: Arthur F. Marotti
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780268034801
Category : Anti-Catholicism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Publisher description: Arthur F. Marotti analyzes some of the rhetorical and imaginative means by which the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority defined themselves and their religious and political antagonists in early modern England. Marotti focuses on the period between the arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries in England in 1580 and the climax of ongoing religious conflict in the Restoration-era "Popish Plot" and the 1688 "Glorious Revolution." He covers such issues as the relationship of print culture to the residual Catholic culture in Elizabethan England; recusant women, Jesuits, and the cultural "othering" of Catholics; martyrdom accounts; polemically charged Catholic and Protestant narratives of conversion; and the depiction of Catholic plots or outrages and providential Protestant deliverances.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Politics and Ideology

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Politics and Ideology PDF Author: Jeffrey Haynes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100041700X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
This comprehensive handbook examines relationships between religion, politics and ideology, with a focus on several world religions — Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism — in a variety of contexts, regions and countries. Relationships between religion, politics and ideology help mould people’s attitudes about the way that political systems, both domestically and internationally, are organised and operate. While conceptually separate, religion, politics and ideology often become intertwined and as a result their relationships evolve over time. This volume brings together a number of expert contributors who explore a wide range of topical and controversial issues, including gender, nationalism, communism, fascism, populism and Islamism. Such topics inform the overall aim of the handbook: to provide a comprehensive summary of the relationships between religion, politics and ideology, including basic issues and new approaches. This handbook is a major research resource for students, researchers and professionals from various disciplinary backgrounds, including religious studies, political science, international relations, and sociology.

Capitalizing Religion

Capitalizing Religion PDF Author: Craig Martin
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472530365
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
Talk of 'spirituality' and 'individual religion' is proliferating both in popular discourse and scholarly works. Increasingly people claim to be 'spiritual but not religious,' or to prefer 'individual religion' to 'organized religion.' Scholars have for decades noted the phenomenon - primarily within the middle class - of individuals picking and choosing elements from among various religious traditions, forming their own religion or spirituality for themselves. While the topics of 'spirituality' and 'individual religion' are regularly treated as self-evident by the media and even some scholars of religion, Capitalizing Religion provides one of the first critical analyses of the phenomenon, arguing that these recent forms of spirituality are in many cases linked to capitalist ideology and consumer practices. Examining cases such as Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, and Karen Berg's God Wears Lipstick, Craig Martin ultimately argues that so-called 'individual religion' is a religion of the status quo or, more critically, 'an opiate of the bourgeoisie.' Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and Opiate of the Bourgeoisie is a landmark publication in critical religious studies.