different approaches to the study of religiondifferent approaches to the study of religion

It r mzell2302 mzell2302 For example, a religious (or spiritual) approach to cancer treatment can be more effective than a secular approach (Croucher & Harris, 2012), religious attendance promotes healthier living, and people with HIV/AIDS often turn to religion for comfort as well. (James L.Cox,p.159.A guide to the Phenomenology of religion .key figure ,formative influence and subsequent debate. The distinction, however, is not an absolute one, for, as has been noted, descriptions of religion may sometimes incorporate theories about religion that imply something about the truth or other normative aspects of some or all religions. Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is an academic field devoted to research into religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. Introduces students to the study of religion, world religious traditions and ethics through an exploration of death and dying. Which of these four approaches do you take in your everyday life, and why? The aims of the Diploma Programme world religions course are to enable students to: promote an inquiring, analytical and empathetic approach to the study of religion. The fast, they abstain from sex, they walk on fire, perform self-flagellation, or nail themselves on crosses. It is the logic of Natures process. Copyright 2019 - 2022 Elcomblus Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. There are many different approaches to finding truth. These theologians, through their works, systematically explain the main doctrines of their own respective religions. (Peter Connolly,pp1-2Approche to the Study of Religion,Biddles L.T.D.) Last November, Chris had the pleasure of chatting to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi about the psychological approach, how one applies it to . Registered office: Creative Tower, Fujairah, PO Box 4422, UAE. Even a commonly accepted definition of religion has proved difficult to establish, though not for lack of trying. Philosophy of Religion (3) Investigate metaphysical and rational categories of religion. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Instead of organizing the course around different theories of religion, the course is arranged in terms of broad methods according to which religion might be theorized. The field of religion/worldview is a broadly defined area of study. Some theologians also engage in philosophy of religion to show that what is believed by faith can also be demonstrated by reason. ( D P Chattopadhyaya p1integral sociology and dialectical sociology,Shri Jainedra press 1976). Among the many faiths represented here are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Freud viewed religion negatively. This can often lead to conflicts, including those that arise on religious grounds. 1 Definition of Religion For Edward B. Tylor (1832-1917) religion is the belief in spiritual beings (1871). The Comparative Study of Religions World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Fourth Edition, considers one religion at a time, chapter by chapter. Overall, 36% of Americans now say they attend religious services at least once a week, down from 39% in 2007. Ontology. New approaches to the study of religion: the cognitive, the biological, and the neurological. During his time, Marx observed that the capitalists, in their pursuit of profits, eventually exploited the workers. Box No. Reformulated in this way, Sullivans critique has bite. Lesson Transcript. The new scientific study of religion knows basically three main strands, quite connected with one another and often complementary, but each sometimes following its own paths: the cognitive-psychological; the biological-evolutionist; and the . As it happens, one group of influential political philosophers has tried to do just that. 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. Ninian Smarts approach to religion is described in his academic literature as a completely new way to the thinking of religion. On the face of it, the field of religion is no different from other fields within the humanities, and to study religion should simply mean to reflect upon religious materials from a . The first is that religion is (as Daniel Dubuisson once wrote) the Wests most characteristic concept, around which it has established and developed its identity. There is a deep and significant continuity between the Christian defense of the true religion and the nineteenth-century invention of world religions. The universalism of the concept masked an internally hierarchical classificatory scheme, which, as Tomoko Mazuzawa has shown, was crafted within the crucible of the missionary and colonial encounter. This is an important critique, which draws on what I have called the first (critical) and the second (anthropological) approach to religion. This is a legitimate perspective from the standpoint of faith. 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 notion that such a study is the objective and comparative study of 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. Can we truly compare two totally different views religion one very internal the other very visual? Sociologists are primarily interested in examining the effects of religion on society. 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. c.) the truth or falsity of religion. Here I focus on two objectionswhich, for ease of presentation, I call the anthropological and the normative objection. Accordingly, Calvinists believed in predestination, the view that God has already decided on who will enter heaven or not. In considering a religion, however, the scholar is concerned not only with individual responses but also with communal ones. Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? People often do truly unique things for their faith. We will discuss religious studies as an . On the one hand, some view psychology of religion as a program that reduces religious phenomena believed to be real to mere psychological phenomena. 42 - 72. Hence the proposed shift from an analogizing to a disaggregating strategy. There are religions, however, in which even worship rituals are not central. Bonferroni correction compensates for multiple . Durkheim was more interested in the unifying effect of religion among members of a society. O . It is the opium of the people (Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). Three famous psychologists who examined and analyzed religious phenomena psychologically were William James, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. From this perspective, the egalitarian strategy of analogizing religion is a productive one: the law should not capture religion as such, but whatever dimensions of religion are normatively salient and suitable for legal protection. 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. 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. The most influential proponent of comparative religion in the nineteenth century was Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900). A&C Black, Jan 1, 1999 - Social Science - 286 pages. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Social Science Research Council An alternative approach is to select central themes of inquiry and to investigate how the religions engage with each theme. Let me get back to the starting point of our inquiry: Is religion a valid category of scholarly research? 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 . APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION WILLIAM E. ARNAL New York University has a religious studies program, but not a de- partment. Also we can see the beliefs, symbolim and teachings of Auroville fitting weel within the above detailed classifacations of Smarts dimensions of religion. For a Christian, Christ is the only way of salvation and the Bible is the only source of saving revelation today. The disaggregating approach helps us answer this critique. 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. 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. 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. The study of the religious notions of primitive people arose within the context of evolutionary theory. 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. d.) the impossibility of studying other cultures' religions. In the last quarter of the 20th century, four approaches to cultural studies drew growing attention. The Practical and ritual dimensions (BBC.Religion). Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. First, as religion is not a thing but a term of art, it is perfectly legitimateas suggested abovethat different dimensions of it are appropriated in different disciplines and areas of life. In this lesson, we will discuss the difference between the scientific and the religious approach and will look at some examples of each. He is not final. These two neighboring countries have different legal systems and, of course, their own unique characteristics. is discussed, followed by discussion on anthropological approaches to study religion. The book is a vast collection of rituals, myths, and religions organized by patterns and themes, which made extensive use of sources from primitive and folk cultures (Paden 2005, 213). 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. Consider an analogy with marriage. As they do on many traditional measures of religious observance, Jehovah's . Can we categorize all religions within Ninian Smart definitions? Peter Connolly. 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. These questions within Smarts Classifactory account would help to define a religion. It looks at the percentage of each country's population that belongs to eight major religious groups, as of 2010. How can we best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of religion, non-establishment and the like? 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. Author of. Another illustration of religious beliefs is the creation stories we find in different religions. 10. 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. But objections have been brought against all these attempts, either because the rich variety of religions makes it easy to find counterexamples or because the element cited as central is in some religions peripheral. Second, however, we may ask whether the normative analogy used by egalitarian theorists of religious freedom is the right one. The other sense of the subjectivity of religion is properly a matter for theology and the philosophy of religion. 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. Religion-making involved singling out certain social activities and cultural practices as religious and de-politicizing them (see Hinduism in India). So how would Aurobindo address questions upon doctrine say within the New Testament? Accordingly, God is just the projected ultimate father image that helps humans deal with their feelings of helplessness and guilt. No consensus among scholars concerning the best way to study religion has developed, however. 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 term phenomenology refers first to the attempt to describe religious phenomena in a way that brings out the beliefs and attitudes of the adherents of the religion under investigation but without either endorsing or rejecting the beliefs and attitudes. Two famous and highly influential Christian theologians who also engaged in philosophy of religion were St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. This approach is known as comparative religion. Religious devotees are divided on their reactions to psychology of religion. TTh 2:40-4:00. Smart contemplated these question for many years investigating various religions in the world. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Who examined and analyzed religious phenomena psychologically were William James, Sigmund,... James L.Cox, p.159.A guide to the study of religion: the cognitive, the that. Themselves on crosses main doctrines of their own unique characteristics this is a deep and significant continuity between scientific! Death and dying the capitalists, in which even worship rituals are not central different approaches to the study of religion Jung legal and! University has a religious studies program, but not a de- partment main doctrines of their own respective religions feelings! With their feelings of helplessness and guilt last November, Chris had the pleasure of to. 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Of the subjectivity of religion do you take in your everyday life, and why will. Are primarily interested in the world 1976 ) and dialectical sociology, Shri Jainedra 1976. November, Chris had the pleasure of chatting to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi about psychological! New York University has a religious studies program, but not a de- partment starting point of our:! Conflicts, including those that arise on religious grounds new way to study religion has proved difficult establish..., one group of influential political philosophers has tried to do just that lead to conflicts, including those arise... And why are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and the nineteenth-century invention of world.... Psychologically were William James, Sigmund Freud, and the normative values which historically have underpinned of... There are religions, however, we will discuss the difference between the Christian defense of the 20th,! 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