There are two main reasons for this suspicion. 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. Theologians adopt a more content-based approach: they study the texts and dogma which capture our fundamental dependence on a greater order of things. Sociology studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. But it is necessary to be clear about what objectivity and subjectivity in religion mean. Christian neo-orthodoxy can be placed as a middle position between traditional orthodoxy and liberalism. Since becoming aware of our unconscious makes us a whole person (a fully realized Self), religion is thus seen by Jung as something positive (Merkur 2005, 177). Author of, Robert Segal, Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland. Contact. 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. 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. Let me get back to the starting point of our inquiry: Is religion a valid category of scholarly research? The modern sovereign state is grounded in a distinctive political theology that mobilizes the structural categories of metaphysics and theology to bolster and consolidate the higher identity of secular citizenship. In considering a religion, however, the scholar is concerned not only with individual responses but also with communal ones. 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. They are: commitment theory, which postulates that religion is a system of costly signaling that reduces deception and creates cooperation within groups; cognitive theory, which postulates that religion is the manifestation of mental modules that have evolved for other purposes . Kujenga Amani facilitates the exchange of ideas about diverse aspects of peacebuilding in Africa. We will discuss religious studies as an . We can say that there are different approaches that can be taken when studying religion. 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. Forte geertz symbols rituals and faith based behavior nov 8 14 ppt 4 Ecumenical/Inclusivism. How can we best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of religion, non-establishment and the like? Which of these four approaches do you take in your everyday life, and why? ( D P Chattopadhyaya p1integral sociology and dialectical sociology,Shri Jainedra press 1976). Religion and 'The Study of Religions' has many approaches which try to investigate the core of what religion is and what it means to the people who practice it. Psychology of religion involves the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious institutions, as well as to individuals of all religious or noreligious persuasions. It may perhaps intensify your religious experience. Sullivan demonstrates that religion is too complex, too comprehensive, and too multi-faceted to be adequately captured by the law of the liberal state. The purpose of this course is to introduce and examine a variety of methodological approaches to the study of religion. Box No. The concept exhibits a complex continuum of resemblances and differences. In sum, the anthropological objection urges us to take both ordinary language and ordinary experience seriously. On the one hand, some view psychology of religion as a program that reduces religious phenomena believed to be real to mere psychological phenomena. This distinction depends to some extent upon taking a projectionist view of religion as a human product. Religious devotees are divided on their reactions to psychology of religion. (Peter Connolly,pp1-2Approche to the Study of Religion,Biddles L.T.D.) The other is Sri Aurobindo who brought a change to the vision of evolution of life into the divinity of life. 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. 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. Ccile Laborde is Professor of Political Theory at University College London. Some religions do not have a deity; others are community-based rather than belief-based; and the boundary between them and secular ideologies such as nationalism is porous. Animism consists of the belief in immortal souls, gods, and other spiritual beings. 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. Conflict sometimes arises because the committed point of view is likely to begin from a more conservative stance, accepting at face value the scriptural accounts of events, whereas the secular historian may be more skeptical, especially of records of miraculous events. 3.7 Robert Marrett and Animatism. No consensus among scholars concerning the best way to study religion has developed, however. The normative objection is slightly different. June 03, 2016. Learn about sociologists . 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 . Like most abstract concepts, the concept of religion is a construction projected onto the world, but one consequence of this large-scale projection may well be that our world has genuinely come to exhibit it. II. 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. Accordingly, God is just the projected ultimate father image that helps humans deal with their feelings of helplessness and guilt. These different reasons might lead to different approaches to the study of religion. We pick out, from the complex notion of religion that we have inherited, distinct elements and values that democratic law has good reason to protect. As a belief system, religion shapes what people think and how they see the world. On the contrary, religion, as it is studied in the secular state university, is both a category and an aspect of human behavior that must be subjected to the same types of scrutiny as any other category of human behavior that one may study. Personal experience is crucial to any understanding of religion .On this particular account Aurobindo discovers the relation or union, he favours, what he identifies as spiritual psychology and integral methods, but for both he confirms that the objective is to be understood and interpreted in terms of subjective. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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 . Among the many faiths represented here are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. 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 publication sand television worldwide developing his own vision and philosophy of human progress and spiritual evolution. But perhaps we should apply to religion something like Ludwig Wittgensteins theory of family resemblance. These questions within Smarts Classifactory account would help to define a religion. First, the secular state defines what religion is; religion is privatized as a faith whose object is the supernatural, and differentiates it from the natural and the rational which are the jurisdiction of the state. If your specific country is not listed, please select the UK version of the site, as this is best suited to international visitors. 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. Not surprisingly, religion-making quickly became a tool of colonial and neo-colonial governance. This decline is accompanied by a rise in the share of U.S. adults who say they seldom or never attend religious services (from 27% in 2007 to 30% in 2014). describing how religion is experienced by practitioners. The Hijab Controversy in Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2008). In this . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Social Science Research Council foster a respectful awareness of the significance of the beliefs and practices for the faith member. Religion is both a fascinating and an essential subject of study. A criticism of Aurobindos view may be seen that it seeks to remain within religion itself, similar to that of Smart as they both emphasise the importance of the experience of religion, a personal contact with God or Gods, however within Marxism we can see a move away from this religious experience. In the last quarter of the 20th century, four approaches to cultural studies drew growing attention. Particularly, this study used an interdisciplinary approach, that is, a combination of religious and social approaches. Instead, I shall merely sketch an alternative strategy. Sociologists study religion as both a belief system and a social institution. In this post, I briefly set out three distinct approaches to the study of religion: criticizing religion, upholding religion, and disaggregating religion. 1 Review. The phenomenology of religion is an approach to the study of religion that emphasizes: a.) 5 Evangelical Christian. Most of the major thinkers recognized in this area are also those recognized in the sociology of religion like Durkheim and Weber. Your email address will not be published. The only appropriate scholarly stance towards this object is one that is critical and skeptical. 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. TTh 2:40-4:00. Each perspective uniquely conceptualizes society, social . Another reason is that questions about the origins and functions of religion have often been conflated with questions about the truth of religion, and this has led to controversies that tend to hinder the development of common concepts, methodologies, and problems. Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. Which concept of religionif anydo we need in the law of the liberal democratic state? People often do truly unique things for their faith. 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. Significance is reported at the p < .10 level. For other religions, the systematic study of their doctrines is usually referred to as philosophy instead of theology. One obvious reason is that the term theology implies a belief in one God but other religions may not subscribe either to the belief in God or gods or to the belief that there is only one God. It all depends on the person you are and the personal period of life you are going through. A standard line of criticism against this egalitarian strategy has been to argue that it rests on a contested understanding of religion. The law does not describe and regulate the full experience of marriage: the fact that, in law, marriage is a contract does not mean that marriage is, or should be experienced as, a contract. As the world's largest democracy, India . 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. 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. Although I cannot make the full case here, I sketch a preliminary defense of the third approach, in the context of recent debates in political theory. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis, which generally claims that our behaviors are largely controlled by our unconscious mind which contains our repressed sexual and violent desires. Although there is still no agreement on this issue, the frontier between traditional religions and modern political ideologies remains a promising topic of study. The disaggregating approach helps us answer this critique. So the starting point of the disaggregation strategy is to accept that, as religion is indeed not a thing but a term of art (it has different meanings in different contexts), different dimensions of it will be appropriated in different ways in different disciplines. This research focuses on the legal basis for anti-corruption measures in Indonesia and Malaysia and touches upon aspects of enforcement. As to the first sense, one of the challenges to the student of religion is the problem of evoking its inner, individual side, which is not observable in any straightforward way. 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. Sociologists are primarily interested in examining the effects of religion on society. The History of Religion as a Sociological Concept This means that a student of theology is a follower of the particular religion he/she is studying; whereas a student of religious studies is usually not a follower of the religions he/she is studying. For example different opinions regarding the Trinity between Roman Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses. First, different disciplines will have different answers to the question of what the concept of religion is for; and as a result they will work with different conceptions of religion. Tylor, in his work Primitive Culture (1871), claimed that the essence of religion or the minimum defining property of religion, is the belief in Spiritual Beings, which he called animism. (Note that no assumption is made about the actual disciplinary location of scholars. 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. Transcribed image text: To address the following questions, consider the four approaches to religion described in the introduction to this module exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism and empathetic interest in other people. Office hours: MW 3-4, TTh 1-2:30. and by appointment. It is a childish illusion for, as Freud remarked, religion originates in the helplessness and anxiety of childhood and early manhood (quoted in Merkur 2005,166). They take significant risks and spend time, money, and all kinds of valuable resources for their Religion. The adherent of a faith is no doubt authoritative as to his own experience, but what of the communal significance of the rites and institutions in which the adherent participates? 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? For this reason, let us examine the ideas of another pioneering anthropologist of religion, namely Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917). (James L.Cox,p.159.A guide to the Phenomenology of religion .key figure ,formative influence and subsequent debate. Barths distinction attempts to draw a line between the transcendent, as it reveals itself to humans, and religion, as a human product involved in the response to revelation. These different approaches disagree about the essence of religion, but all three camps operate within a shared account of the human. The term fundamentalism can be used in very different religious contexts and texts to describe the devotion and strict loyalty to a set of principles or ideas. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. 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. It also depends heavily on the motives the researcher brings to his or her investigation of religious or worldview issues. Mysticism. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 10. 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. 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 . For our purposes, we shall examine certain approaches to the study of religions that are based on certain academic disciplines. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. All work is written to order. The interrelations of the various disciplines in relation to religion as an area of . Phone: 212-377-2700 Fax: 212-377-2727. Some theologians also engage in philosophy of religion to show that what is believed by faith can also be demonstrated by reason. The absence of good (the moral kind) is caused by our disobedience to the will of God. There are religions, however, in which even worship rituals are not central. 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. 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. Sociology in general looks at people's . 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. The study of religion may thus come to have a reflexive effect on religion itself, such as the manner in which modern Christian theology has been profoundly affected by the whole question of the historicity of the New Testament. Philosophy of religion deals with philosophical issues found in religion. The other sense of the subjectivity of religion is properly a matter for theology and the philosophy of religion. These two neighboring countries have different legal systems and, of course, their own unique characteristics. Bonferroni correction compensates for multiple . Network analysis applied to such data may provide insight into real-life mixtures . While theology attempts to understand the transcendent or . Evolutionary Approaches. T here are many ways of studying religions. 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. It is the opium of the people (Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). the myths of a religion. 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). 1 This study, however, takes a relatively straightforward approach to religious diversity. The people who take these courses are usually involved in religion themselves ,many are involved a in religious communities or, wishing to know more and learn regarding the religious beliefs of others. liade (1907-1986), whose studies included the concepts of sacred space and mythic time, and the sacredness of nature (Paden 2005, 215). Methodologies in religious studies are the interpretive models on which the analysis of religious phenomena and resources are discussed. From its approach, we understand that Sri Aurobindo begins his work clearly within religious prospect, particularly his own relation with yoga, he explains; the practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; The intent is to find occupation of good in the world, to outcome a spiritual conversion and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. the collective unconscious mind contains universal experiences of mankind and the archetypes (the basic universal images that recur in various forms in different cultures) which we have inherited from our ancestors. Phenomenology or Religion (3) Study of consciousness and experiences. a creation of capitalism, for Weber it is the other way roundcapitalism is largely due to religion, more specifically, the Calvinist religion. The method used was to compare the subjective experience with the intent of shaping the arrangement of religion itself from within the structure. In this post, I briefly set out three distinct approaches to the study of religion: criticizing religion, upholding religion, and disaggregating religion. Consider an analogy with marriage. Thus in principle it is the study of all religions from a viewpoint not isolated within any one of them. Study of at least two religious traditions using three different academic approaches: Religion Menu. Human health risk assessment of chemical mixtures is complex due to the almost infinite number of possible combinations of chemicals to which people are exposed to on a daily basis. It looks at the percentage of each country's population that belongs to eight major religious groups, as of 2010. First of all we have to say that both, Smart and Aurobindo have not defined religion from objective point of view but rather to determine religion in terms of its own value. If we get rid of the concept of religion, can we adequately express and protect those values? Psychology is the study of human and animal behavior and how thinking processes operate. There are many different approaches to finding truth. Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified. Morgan, Sue. The apologetic approaches to the study of religion is pro-religion in that it defends religion and attempts to prove that religion is true, right, or good. The Christian theologian, for example, may see a particular historical process as providential. In the above definition Marx has stressed few points about religion which require special emphasis. Sociology in general looks at people's . APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION 109 like, the students were asked to read Marx, Freud, Durkheim. As they do on many traditional measures of religious observance, Jehovah's . 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. Aquinas is famous for his five proofs for the existence of God: his arguments from causation, motion, necessity, design, and degrees of protection. Thus, when William James describes religion as. But because they wanted to know who would eventually be saved and enter heaven, they thought that financial success was one good indicator. 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. 1 Definition of Religion For Edward B. 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