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. The realities of the modern world significantly contribute to communication between representatives of different cultures. Your email address will not be published. 2 Psychological. (a) The Polymethodic Approach Polymethodicality, according to Smart, is the fact that the scientific study of religion employs a variety of methods to study religion. Aside from being exploited, the workers were also dehumanized or alienated in the workplace. Evolutionary Approaches. The SSRC is an independent, international, nonprofit organization. The implications of the first approach have been resisted in many quarters. The normative objection is slightly different. I do not think it is, although I cannot make the full case here. "The notion that such a study is the objective and comparative study of religion. 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. Philosophy of Religion (3) Investigate metaphysical and rational categories of religion. 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. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Study for free with our range of university lectures! Not surprisingly perhaps, the work of those scholars who have most influenced the critical religion school, such as Asad and Mahmood, explicitly aims to provide a thick anthropological description of the complexity and diversity of religious experienceit brings out, for example, the distinctive modes of Muslim religious subjectivity. The fast, they abstain from sex, they walk on fire, perform self-flagellation, or nail themselves on crosses. On the other hand, some view it as a way of purifying religion from the idolatry or worship of human-made objects. In fact, the religions of civilized races evolved from the animism of the lower races. 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. 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. New approaches to the study of religion: the cognitive, the biological, and the neurological. Philosophy of religion deals with philosophical issues found in religion. If it is not possible, then cross-religious comparisons would mostly break down, for normally it is not possible to be inside more than one religion. In the literature, lived religion is treated variously as a term, a concept, an approach, and a field of studyor all of these. Bonferroni correction compensates for multiple . 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. Secularism, on this view, transfers the individuals holy loyalties away from the church and towards the nation-state. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines. There are many ways of studying religions. God, in this regard, serves as a source of security and forgiveness. Manifestations of the sacred. Network analysis applied to such data may provide insight into real-life mixtures . June 03, 2016. This is a legitimate perspective from the standpoint of faith. Thus, when William James describes religion as. A field study was conducted to achieve the objective of this research. Durkheim was more interested in the unifying effect of religion among members of a society. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. Kujenga Amani facilitates the exchange of ideas about diverse aspects of peacebuilding in Africa. 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. 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 . Accordingly, Calvinists believed in predestination, the view that God has already decided on who will enter heaven or not. This tradition goes back in modern times to the seminal work of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (180472), who proposed that God was the extension of human aspirations, and it is found in the work of the philosopher Karl Marx, the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and others. 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. Instead, I shall merely sketch an alternative strategy. This research focuses on the legal basis for anti-corruption measures in Indonesia and Malaysia and touches upon aspects of enforcement. Phenomenology or Religion (3) Study of consciousness and experiences. Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. Some of the contributions of William James were his distinction between institutional religion and personal religion, his analysis of religious experiences as mystical experiences, and his pragmatic approach to the value of religionthat the truth and value of a religious belief for an individual depend on the beneficial effects of the belief on the life of the individual. So neutrality, for liberals such as Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, is generalized non-establishment. Egalitarian theorists of religious freedom offer a compelling response to the critical religion school. Particularly, this study used an interdisciplinary approach, that is, a combination of religious and social approaches. 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. b.) 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. But nor does it reduce the normative inscription of religion in the law to a narrow (often ethnocentric) set of concerns and values. We also have Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto philosophies; instead of Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto theologies. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! (Michael T.Mclaughlin,p96, Editrice Ponteficia Universita` Grecoriana Roma 2003)In many occasions he confirmed that he does not intend to promote any old religion or to find a new one and he strongly oppose religious particolarism. 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). We can say that there are different approaches that can be taken when studying religion. Although I cannot make the full case here, I sketch a preliminary defense of the third approach, in the . Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Social Science Research Council How can we best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of religion, non-establishment and the like? 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. Influential sociological theories of religion came from Karl Marx (1818-1893), Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1920). 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 second ground for skepticism is that religion has served to define the western idea of the secular, and remains deeply entangled with it. Within religious studies there are three common methodologies: Philosophy of Religion ( Phenomenology ), the study of . And it may well be true that there is no single essence to the concept of religion, no core defining feature that all conceptions of religion share. We can confirm that the method of study that Smart used in his approach comprehend both external and internal analysis of religion, characterized by phenomenological perspectives. 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. It does this by examining the dynamics of the constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013). Thus, some political ideologies, such as communism and fascism, have been regarded as analogous to religion. 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. The Christian theologian, for example, may see a particular historical process as providential. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. The word anthropology means science of human beings or humanity. Which of these four approaches do you take in your everyday life, and why? 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. On the other hand, comparative religion refers to a branch of religious studies that is concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices of two or more particular religions. Most of the major thinkers recognized in this area are also those recognized in the sociology of religion like Durkheim and Weber. Marrett (1866-1943) was, similar to Tylor, an anthropologist who studied religion and who adopted the evolutionary approach. Freud viewed religion negatively. Continuum International publishing group .2006. In particular, a student of theology intends to deepen his/her understanding of a particular religion, while a student of religious studies intends to understand the different religions of the world. For Jung, religious experiences are manifestations of the archetypes in the collective unconscious in our own consciousness. Furthermore, if theology studies a particular religion always from the inside, religious studies study different religions mostly from the outside. 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. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 10. The other sense of the subjectivity of religion is properly a matter for theology and the philosophy of religion. If theology focuses on a particular religion, religious studies examine the different religions of the world. 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. Methodologies provide a lense of analysis from which to view the field of religous studies. 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