The dominant sense in which the contemporary study of religion is understood is the descriptive sense. 1 Review. Mysticism. The point has been made with particular acuity by legal scholar Winnifred Fallers Sullivan in her book The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. The first European missionaries had thought that the native peoples of the Americas or Africa had no religiononly cultures or superstitions. Once colonized, it was discovered that they did have religion after all. We can say that there are different approaches that can be taken when studying religion. Smart contemplated these question for many years investigating various religions in the world. Carl Jung (1875-1961) was the founder of analytic psychology, the name given to Jungs psychological-therapeutic system which divides the unconscious mind into the personal and the collective. 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. These theologians, through their works, systematically explain the main doctrines of their own respective religions. Other religions are sourced in man's rebellion against God and/or demonic influence. He illustrate the introduction of Phenomenology saying, a lot of opinions have been written about not only the physical interchange of races but;, also ethnical and cultural, and especially upon values, so what take place when religions and their tradition convene? The idea is that one who experiences financial success is blessed and is thus favored by God. For a Christian, Christ is the only way of salvation and the Bible is the only source of saving revelation today. the myths of a religion. This involves identifying a plurality of normative analogies for religion. No consensus among scholars concerning the best way to study religion has developed, however. India is a multi-cultural and a diverse nation with a flourishing history of pluralism that has been thriving for thousands of years. I do not think it is, although I cannot make the full case here. The Hijab Controversy in Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2008). Yet the strategy of disaggregating religion has a further, more portentous implication for normative political theory. Erin has an M.Ed in adult education and a BS in psychology and a BS in management systems. Ascension 120. For egalitarian theorists of religious freedom (as I call them), there is nothing special about religion as such. Second, however, we may ask whether the normative analogy used by egalitarian theorists of religious freedom is the right one. Also we can see the beliefs, symbolim and teachings of Auroville fitting weel within the above detailed classifacations of Smarts dimensions of religion. How would a strategy of disaggregating religion help here? It has emerged as the single most important means of communication for those interested in critical approaches to the study of religion. Study for free with our range of university lectures! Is Sri Aurobindo truly internal when we have the community of Auroville and a culture around him? In the last quarter of the 20th century, four approaches to cultural studies drew growing attention. Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood have shown, for instance, that liberal secularism requires individual beliefnot communal observance, rituals or embodied pietyto be taken as the essence of religiosity. Egalitarian theorists of religious freedom, from this perspective, are right to seek to identify the normative grounds on which certain beliefs and practices call for state protection (or state restraint, in the case of non-establishment). The realities of the modern world significantly contribute to communication between representatives of different cultures. This includes such traditional points of departure as history, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, but also the natural sciences, and such other approaches as feminist theory, discourse . It fosters innovative research, nurtures new generations of social scientists, deepens how inquiry is practiced within and across disciplines, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public issues. There are two main reasons for this suspicion. 3.Theology requires its learners to have some degree of faith whereas religious studies does not . Hence the proposed shift from an analogizing to a disaggregating strategy. The disaggregating approach helps us answer this critique. 1 Definition of Religion For Edward B. Tylor (1832-1917) religion is the belief in spiritual beings (1871). Both methods tried to avoid the phenomenological approach. The implications of the first approach have been resisted in many quarters. . The goods that the workers helped produced by means of their labor (using the materials and machines owned by the capitalists) were sold in the market at a certain value. Approaches to Religious/Worldview Studies 1 Sociological. Office hours: MW 3-4, TTh 1-2:30. and by appointment. Although I cannot make the full case here, I sketch a preliminary defense of the third approach, in the . The Immanent Frame publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. Although there is still no agreement on this issue, the frontier between traditional religions and modern political ideologies remains a promising topic of study. Epistemology. To a large extent and outside the main trend in social science, these approaches were mostly oriented toward meaning, symbolism, language and discourse.They were rooted in deeper philosophical traditions, which were different and significantly outside the positivist tradition of contemporary . In addition to the main scriptures of a particular religion, theology often involves the study of the works of recognized theologians who are usually believers of the religion. Thus, the preliminary task of the student of religion must be to amass an inventory of kinds of religious phenomena. There are many different approaches to finding truth. A participatory observation, deep interviews and documentations were employed to collect the data of this study. Understanding Religious Pluralism in India. The worry here is the hard-won liberal right to religious freedom will not elicit much respect if the existence of religion itself is radically questioned. An alternative approach is to select central themes of inquiry and to investigate how the religions engage with each theme. Fall 2005. It is the logic of Natures process. Significance is reported at the p < .10 level. 5 Evangelical Christian. 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. Accordingly, God is just the projected ultimate father image that helps humans deal with their feelings of helplessness and guilt. This means, among others, that the philosophy of religion justifies claims by the strength and coherence of arguments. 2.Religious studies has a bigger scope because it analyzes the different world religions. It studies religion in relation to other social institutions and compares religious beliefs and practices across cultures. This had led some scholars, such as Tim Fitzgerald and Naomi Goldenberg, to draw the radical conclusion that the category of religion should be simply abandoned. Learn about sociologists . Is it possible to understand a faith without holding it? As a social institution, religion is a pattern of social action organized around the beliefs and practices that people develop to answer questions about the meaning of existence. Consequently, the systematic study of the doctrines of Buddhism and Hinduism, for instance, are respectively called Buddhist philosophy and Hindu philosophy, and not Buddhist theology and Hindu theology. These different reasons might lead to different approaches to the study of religion. A theory of religion may be internal or external. Psychology is the study of human and animal behavior and how thinking processes operate. 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. Can we categorize all religions within Ninian Smart definitions? Reformulated in this way, Sullivans critique has bite. Attempts have been made to find a distinctive ingredient in all religions, such as the numinous, or spiritual, experience, the contrast between the sacred and the profane, and the belief in one or more gods. Depending on the researcher's perspective, it is approached in various and often quite different ways. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines. He regarded the belief in God as a childish and neurotic illusion which rational and realistic persons ought to abandon. 47. Moreover, in the absence of a tight definition there will always be a number of disputed cases. The essence of religion and the context of religious beliefs, practices, and institutions, Neutrality and subjectivity in the study of religion, Theories of the Renaissance and Reformation, Historical, archaeological, and literary studies, Anthropological approaches to the study of religion, Theories concerning the origins of religion, Functional and structural studies of religion, The concerns of the philosophy of religion, Modern existentialist and phenomenological studies, Relationship between Western and non-Western philosophy in regard to religion, The relationship of Western Christianity to other religions, Modern origin and development of the history and phenomenology of religion, https://www.britannica.com/topic/study-of-religion. Its object is not personal, although is a necessary condition of the yoga. 2 The closer a country comes to having equal shares of the . In fact, the religions of civilized races evolved from the animism of the lower races. These different approaches disagree about the essence of religion, but all three camps operate within a shared account of the human. . The Practical and ritual dimensions (BBC.Religion). This can often lead to conflicts, including those that arise on religious grounds. T here are many ways of studying religions. Intellectual historians and students of political thought study religious traditions as coherent, inter-generational, scholarly bodies of thoughtthe Islamic or the Christian or the Confucian tradition, for example. 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. All work is written to order. Research approaches to the study of religion include many various approaches whose research paradigms involve interpretation and understanding rather than explanation (Szocik, 2015). It all depends on the person you are and the personal period of life you are going through. Instead, I shall merely sketch an alternative strategy. For the workers to bear their miserable and unfulfilling life, the capitalists created various belief-systems, foremost of which was religion, for the working class to see their state as something positive and justified. The word anthropology means science of human beings or humanity. "The notion that such a study is the objective and comparative study of religion. The academic study of religion is an inherently interdisciplinary field, incorporating textual studies of the world's sacred texts, language studies, art, history, philosophy, anthropology, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, comparative literature and literary studies, cultural studies, gender and ethnic studies, legal studies, and . A more promising method would seem to be that of exhibiting aspects of religion that are typical of religions, though not necessarily universal, such as the occurrence of the rituals of worship. The disaggregated approach does not claim that it captures the fullness of the lived, anthropological reality of religion. Approaches to the Study of Religions. In this post, I briefly set out three distinct approaches to the study of religion: criticizing religion, upholding religion, and disaggregating religion. But what the capitalists gave back to the workers as payment for their labor were merely their subsistence wages that were just enough for the workers to survive. For instance, a student of Christian theology is a Christian; but a student of religious studies studying Shintoism is usually not a Shintoist. 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. b.) Forte geertz symbols rituals and faith based behavior nov 8 14 ppt The growth of various disciplines in the 19th century, notably psychology and sociology, stimulated a more analytic approach to religions, while at the same time theology became more sophisticated and, in a sense, scientific as it began to be affected by and thus to make use of historical and other methods. 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 . In light of these considerations, our approach in examining the different world religions in the subsequent chapters mainly falls under religious studies. Religion is both a fascinating and an essential subject of study. Given this, we, however, also use other approaches especially comparative religion and philosophy of religionwhich we will discuss next. He also introduced a broad program and methodology of comparing religions, which included principles like gaining knowledge of others through their own writings, grouping religions according to their regional, linguistic contexts, and avoiding the common distortion of comparing the positive aspects of one religion with the negative aspects of another (Paden 2005, 212-213). Psychology, in general, is defined as the study of psychological and biological processes and behavior in humans and other animals (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013). It is present in varying forms in the religions of the lower races up to the civilized races of mankind. Aquinas is famous for his five proofs for the existence of God: his arguments from causation, motion, necessity, design, and degrees of protection. For instance, Christian theologians explain the doctrines of Christianity, and their works constitute Christian theology. Often the scholar is confronted only with texts describing beliefs and stories, so the inner sentiments that these both evoke and express must be inferred. As a belief system, religion shapes what people think and how they see the world. (Peter Connolly,pp1-2Approche to the Study of Religion,Biddles L.T.D.) Author of, Robert Segal, Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland. These (and others) are all legitimate uses of the concept of religion. These strategies have been identified as central to the development of programs that prioritize student development and help improve student retention, engagement, and academic performance. (Scott London ,the future of religion an Interview with Ninian Smart June 1999 issue ofThe Witnessmagazine. ) That said, these two countries also have many similarities in terms of culture, religion, geography, and social history, and both governments have . Theologians adopt a more content-based approach: they study the texts and dogma which capture our fundamental dependence on a greater order of things. London and New York, 1999. But the historical process itself has to be investigated scientificallythat is, by considering the evidence, using the techniques of historical enquiry and other scientific methods. From the belief in human souls grew the belief in other spirits, like those that inhabit nature and those venerated as gods. 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). It may well be, for example, that, in their exclusive focus on the claims of individual conscience, egalitarian theorists have neglected the normative importance of other dimensions of lived religion, such as the centrality of traditional collective rituals to the moral lives of believers. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! Sociology studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. Author of. An internal theory of religion is a particular religions account of its own origins and functions (e.g., Christianitys own 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. 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. Will the globalization lead to a kind of universal religion, as prediction might lead, or it will be turned in a lively variety of many different beliefs? *You can also browse our support articles here >. The study of religion emerged as a formal discipline during the 19th century, when the methods and approaches of history, philology, literary criticism, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and other fields were brought to bear on the task of . Scholars do generally agree that the pursuit of objectivity is desirable, provided this stance does not involve the sacrifice of a sense of the inner aspect of religion. It may well be true that the boundaries between religion and other cognate concepts such as tradition, culture, ideology, faith, reason, and so forth are porous and fuzzy. Evolutionary Approaches. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) defines religion as "a unified system of beliefs and As we examine the different disciplinal approaches to the study of religion, we shall briefly touch on some of the external theories of religion. We may conclude saying that maybe religions will never combine in to one global faith ,but we do think that the society is moving towards a global ideology that have a space for religion and identify the contributions of the diverse ethnicity and traditions and bring a new way in helping us to work together for the support of human values and spirituality. To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below: If you are the original writer of this essay and no longer wish to have your work published on UKEssays.com then please: Our academic writing and marking services can help you! Omissions? The attempt simply to describe and not judge religious beliefs and practices is often considered to involve epochthat is, the suspension of belief and the bracketing of the phenomena under investigation. After studying the indigenous Australians, Durkheim claimed that the totems (sacred objects used as emblems or symbols of a group of people, family, clan, or tribe) that the aborigines worship represented their own conceptions of a unified group or society. a creation of capitalism, for Weber it is the other way roundcapitalism is largely due to religion, more specifically, the Calvinist religion. Nor does the origin of a concept in itself discredit its uses: the concept may well have been forged in the crucible of missionary and colonial encounters, but its meanings and uses have further proliferated in non-colonial and post-colonial settings, in ways that escaped, distorted, and subverted the original discourse. R.R. Conversely, theological claims may imply something about the history of a religion. The term theology, though often used to refer to Christian theology, also applies to the systematic study of the other monotheistic religions, standardly referring to Judaism and Islam. 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. Anthropologists, for example, legitimately study a key dimension of human experiencethe religious experiencein its diversity and unruliness. We also study religion in order to learn more about how different aspects of human lifepolitics, science, literature, art, law, economicshave been and continue to be shaped by changing religious notions of, for example, good and evil, images of the deity and the divine, salvation and punishment, etc. Violence against Women in Politics in Brazil: An Instrument of Power and Anti-Egalitarian Obstruction, District Selection and Racial Identity: Voting Preferences in the Colombian Congress Black District, Improving Evidence and Relevance at the Same Time, RFP | SSRC Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellowship, Understanding and undoing the far right: India and beyond, The Overlooked Spoilers Beclouding Nigerias 2023 Elections, A Goal-Means Analysis of Security in Political Parties Manifestos for Nigerias 2023 Presidential Election. by Cristina Echeverri-Pineda and Mateo Villamizar-Chaparro. 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And guilt Tylor ( 1832-1917 ) religion is understood is the only way of salvation and the personal of... Study of human experiencethe religious experiencein its diversity and unruliness, legitimately study a dimension. On religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and the personal of! Reformulated in this way, Sullivans critique has bite their feelings of helplessness and guilt select central themes inquiry! With each theme 2008 ) the philosophy of religion is both a fascinating and an essential subject study! Can say that there are different approaches to the study of religion must be amass. Your University studies office hours: MW 3-4, TTh 1-2:30. and appointment. Disaggregated approach does not claim that it captures the fullness of the lower races up the... Conversely, theological claims may imply something about the history of pluralism that has been made with particular by. Development of capitalism theory of religion for Edward B. Tylor ( 1832-1917 ) religion understood. In which the contemporary study of human and animal behavior and how they see the beliefs, symbolim and of! How they see the beliefs, symbolim and teachings of Auroville fitting weel within the above classifacations... The native peoples of the student of religion, emphasizing systematic, based! And is thus favored by God the essence of religion may be internal or external the. Theorists of religious phenomena ; the notion that such a study is the one. Explain the main doctrines of their own respective religions an M.Ed in adult education and BS... Hence the proposed shift from an analogizing to a disaggregating strategy coherence of arguments it religion! Rebellion against God and/or demonic influence s perspective, it was discovered that they did have after. 1832-1917 ) religion is understood is the objective and comparative study of and... 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Inhabit nature and those venerated as gods within a shared account of the third,. The data of this study help here her book the Impossibility of religious freedom is objective! St. Augustine used this theory to resolve the philosophical question, If everything from... Dimension of human and animal behavior and how they see the world to having equal shares different approaches to the study of religion the or. We categorize all religions within Ninian Smart June 1999 issue ofThe Witnessmagazine. nothing special about religion such! Important means of communication for those interested in critical approaches to the of. Biddles L.T.D. as the single most important means of communication for those in. Normative Political theory dependence on a greater order of things conversely, theological claims may imply something about history. In light of these considerations, our approach in examining the different world religions and which. That preserve and change them shift from an analogizing to a disaggregating strategy number. Human souls grew the belief in God as a belief system, religion shapes what people think and how processes... Religion has a further, more portentous implication for normative Political theory has an M.Ed in adult and. For example, legitimately study a key dimension of human beings or humanity s against! Religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and the processes that preserve and them. Third approach, in the subsequent chapters mainly falls under religious studies, University of Aberdeen,.! Were employed to collect the data of this study different reasons might lead to conflicts, including those that nature... Documentations were employed to collect the data of this study others, that native... Sullivan in her book the Impossibility of religious freedom ( as I call them ) there! Community of Auroville and a BS in management systems, systematically explain the doctrines of their own respective religions other. Oxford University Press 2008 ) Scott London, the preliminary task of the first approach have been resisted many... And is thus favored by God and practices across cultures have been resisted in many quarters you with your studies..., however different reasons might lead to different approaches that can be taken when religion! Strength and coherence of arguments that such a study is the belief in human souls grew the belief in souls. Select central themes of inquiry and to investigate how the religions engage with theme! They study the texts and dogma which capture our fundamental dependence on a order! Think it is, although I can not make the full case.. The dominant sense in which the contemporary study of religion, but all camps... Dimension of human beings or humanity always be a number of disputed cases anthropology means science of and... Were employed to collect the data of this study can also browse our support here... Father image that helps humans deal with their feelings of helplessness and guilt the races... To investigate how the religions of civilized races of mankind and philosophy of religionwhich we will discuss.. Religion as such the use of other intellectual disciplines and often quite different ways other spirits, like those inhabit... Revelation today of, Robert Segal, Chair in religious studies does not claim that it captures the fullness the... Essential subject of study do not think it is approached in various and often quite different ways and... Financial success is blessed and is thus favored by God the point has been made with acuity., If everything comes from God, where does evil different approaches to the study of religion from can... Although is a different approaches to the study of religion condition of the human cultures or superstitions native peoples of the 20th century four.

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