The Ideology of Religious Studies
The Ideology of Religious Studies

Author: Timothy Fitzgerald

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-10-16

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0195347153

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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

Author: Timothy Fitzgerald

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0195167694

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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.

Religion and Ideology in Assyria
Religion and Ideology in Assyria

Author: Beate Pongratz-Leisten

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 1614514267

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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.

After World Religions
After World Religions

Author: Christopher R Cotter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-05

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1317419952

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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.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Politics and Ideology
The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Politics and Ideology

Author: Jeffrey Haynes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-14

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 100041700X

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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

Author: Craig Martin

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1472530365

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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.

The Western Construction of Religion
The Western Construction of Religion

Author: Daniel Dubuisson

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2003-06-18

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780801873201

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The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of religionas it is understood in the West but offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.

Religious Affects
Religious Affects

Author: Donovan O. Schaefer

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2015-11-13

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0822374900

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In Religious Affects Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the notion that religion is inextricably linked to language and belief, proposing instead that it is primarily driven by affects. Drawing on affect theory, evolutionary biology, and poststructuralist theory, Schaefer builds on the recent materialist shift in religious studies to relocate religious practices in the affective realm—an insight that helps us better understand how religion is lived in conjunction with systems of power. To demonstrate religion's animality and how it works affectively, Schaefer turns to a series of case studies, including the documentary Jesus Camp and contemporary American Islamophobia. Placing affect theory in conversation with post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, Schaefer explores the extent to which nonhuman animals have the capacity to practice religion, linking human forms of religion and power through a new analysis of the chimpanzee waterfall dance as observed by Jane Goodall. In this compelling case for the use of affect theory in religious studies, Schaefer provides a new model for mapping relations between religion, politics, species, globalization, secularism, race, and ethics.

Antonio Gramsci and the Question of Religion
Antonio Gramsci and the Question of Religion

Author: Bruce Grelle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-19

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1317278348

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Antonio Gramsci and the Question of Religion provides a new introduction to the thought of Gramsci through the prisms of religious studies and comparative ethics. Bruce Grelle shows that Gramsci’s key ideas – on hegemony, ideology, moral reformation, "traditional" and "organic" intellectuals – were formulated with simultaneous considerations of religion and politics. Identifying Gramsci’s particular brand of Marxism, Grelle offers an overview of Gramsci’s approach to religion and applies it to contemporary debates over the role of religion and morality in social order and social change. This book is ideal for students and scholars interested in Gramsci, religion, and comparative ethics.