3 Phenomenological. They argue, for example, that exemptions from general laws can be justified on the ground of conscience; and that what the state should not establish are conceptions of the good. Religion should be disaggregated into a number of different values which relate to the law of the liberal state in different ways. This is a legitimate perspective from the standpoint of faith. 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. a creation of capitalism, for Weber it is the other way roundcapitalism is largely due to religion, more specifically, the Calvinist religion. 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. 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. The interrelations of the various disciplines in relation to religion as an area of . Evolutionary Approaches. From this perspective, it would be a mistake to think that conceptual imprecision is in itself an obstacle to scholarly inquiry. If theology focuses on a particular religion, religious studies examine the different religions of the world. Consider an analogy with marriage. The Immanent Frame publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. The idea is that one who experiences financial success is blessed and is thus favored by God. Thus, when William James describes religion as. New approaches to the study of religion: the cognitive, the biological, and the neurological. Instead, I shall merely sketch an alternative strategy. We're here to answer any questions you have about our services. Theologians adopt a more content-based approach: they study the texts and dogma which capture our fundamental dependence on a greater order of things. (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. For this reason, let us examine the ideas of another pioneering anthropologist of religion, namely Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917). Her last book is Critical Republicanism. For example different opinions regarding the Trinity between Roman Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses. Discussion about religion has been complicated further by the attempt of some Christian theologians, notably Karl Barth (18861968), to draw a distinction between religion and the Gospel (the proclamation peculiar to Christianity). 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. The reflexive effect of the study of religion on religion itself may in practice make it more difficult for the student of religion to adopt the detachment required by bracketing. Although there is still no agreement on this issue, the frontier between traditional religions and modern political ideologies remains a promising topic of study. APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION 109 like, the students were asked to read Marx, Freud, Durkheim. 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. Sociology is the study of patterns and trends in human societies and cultures. Religion may also be thought to be subjective because the criteria by which its truth is decided are obscure and hard to come by, so there is no obvious objective test, the way in which there is for a large range of empirical claims in the physical world. 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. Registered office: Creative Tower, Fujairah, PO Box 4422, UAE. Secularism and freedom of religion, in liberal thought, are connected to moral values such as individual autonomy, moral self-determination, freedom of conscience as well as more political ideals such as non-theocratic constitutional democracy, separation of church and state, and non-establishment of the dominant religion. 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. As the world's largest democracy, India . In fact, the religions of civilized races evolved from the animism of the lower races. 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. 42 - 72. the civilized races. It is the opium of the people (Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). 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. 10. Sociology of religion, on the other hand, studies religious beliefs, practices, and organizations using the theories and methods of the discipline of sociology. 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. II. The word anthropology means science of human beings or humanity. She has published extensively in the areas of republicanism and toleration, theories of law and the state, and global justice. A standard line of criticism against this egalitarian strategy has been to argue that it rests on a contested understanding of 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? 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. 300 Cadman Plaza West 15th Floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 USA Secularism, on this view, transfers the individuals holy loyalties away from the church and towards the nation-state. 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. Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. For a Christian, Christ is the only way of salvation and the Bible is the only source of saving revelation today. Sensory experience. Can we categorize all religions within Ninian Smart definitions? People often do truly unique things for their faith. Looking for a flexible role? 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. Thus in principle it is the study of all religions from a viewpoint not isolated within any one of them. 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? The disaggregating approach helps us answer this critique. The Hijab Controversy in Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2008). If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Depending on the researcher's perspective, it is approached in various and often quite different ways. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives. An alternative approach is to select central themes of inquiry and to investigate how the religions engage with each theme. 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. Here religion involves subjectivity in the sense of individual experience. (James L.Cox,p.159.A guide to the Phenomenology of religion .key figure ,formative influence and subsequent debate. If your specific country is not listed, please select the UK version of the site, as this is best suited to international visitors. Psychology is the study of human and animal behavior and how thinking processes operate. Approaches to ReligionSpring 2010REL 111. 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. Second, however, we may ask whether the normative analogy used by egalitarian theorists of religious freedom is the right one. Significance is reported at the p < .10 level. Author of, Robert Segal, Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The study of multiple religious traditions in order to prove the existence or non-existence of God The scholarly examination and comparison of the beliefs, rituals, customs, and traditions of two or more religions Another illustration of religious beliefs is the creation stories we find in different religions. Briefly, the arguments from causation and motion claim that the series of causes and effects, and movements in the world, must begin with God being the first cause and mover; the argument from design claims that the intricate design of the world cannot be attributed to mere chance but only to God as the divine intelligence; the argument from necessity claims that there must be a God who is a necessary being (one who has always been existing) to explain how contingent beings (those that presently exist but previously did not) have come to exist; and the argument from degrees of perfection claims that there must be a God whose perfection serves as the standard for determining the degrees of qualities that we attribute to things (like that they are good or better). 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). 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. Can we truly compare two totally different views religion one very internal the other very visual? To a great extent, the meanings now attached to the terms religion and religions have tended to promote the study of religion in order to understand the world in which we live rather than as part of a desire for personal religious self-fulfillment. Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? The difficulty of the distinction consists chiefly in a denial that God, as the object of the response, is a religious being (i.e., God is transcendent, not religious in the sense of being a part of the human product), and the question about revelation as a religious fact thus needs to be answered. Continuum International publishing group .2006. 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 . Sociologists are primarily interested in examining the effects of religion on society. The normative objection is slightly different. 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. 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. In this post, I briefly set out three distinct approaches to the study of religion: criticizing religion, upholding religion, and disaggregating religion. June 03, 2016. Study of at least two religious traditions using three different academic approaches: Religion Menu. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Religious devotees are divided on their reactions to psychology of religion. Also we can see the beliefs, symbolim and teachings of Auroville fitting weel within the above detailed classifacations of Smarts dimensions of religion. 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! Mysticism. 2.Religious studies has a bigger scope because it analyzes the different world religions. 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. For instance, a student of Christian theology is a Christian; but a student of religious studies studying Shintoism is usually not a Shintoist. Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. The stress on the distinction between the descriptive and normative approaches is becoming more frequent among scholars of religion. Erin has an M.Ed in adult education and a BS in psychology and a BS in management systems. 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. This distinction depends to some extent upon taking a projectionist view of religion as a human product. (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. 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. by Ccile Laborde February 5, 2014. study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines. Disclaimer: This is an example of a student written essay.Click here for sample essays written by our professional writers. Last November, Chris had the pleasure of chatting to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi about the psychological approach, how one applies it to . For our purposes, we shall examine certain approaches to the study of religions that are based on certain academic disciplines. Chapter 1 in the At this juncture, let us x-ray some of the approaches in studying religion scientifically. Both methods tried to avoid the phenomenological approach. The final approach to world religions is exclusivism. During his time, Marx observed that the capitalists, in their pursuit of profits, eventually exploited the workers. On the other hand, some view it as a way of purifying religion from the idolatry or worship of human-made objects. 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. There are two main reasons for this suspicion. According to William Cavanaughs provocative thesis, the fact that Christianity is construed as a religion, whereas nationalism is not, ensures that the Christians public and lethal loyalty belongs to the nation-state. As a belief system, religion shapes what people think and how they see the world. In Marrett's view, the first form of religion was a belief in an ever-present and ubiquitous force that gave power to all elements of life (Durkheim 203). 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. Aquinas is famous for his five proofs for the existence of God: his arguments from causation, motion, necessity, design, and degrees of protection. APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION WILLIAM E. ARNAL New York University has a religious studies program, but not a de- partment. Some of these theories may be controversial, or questionable, for some people; nonetheless, knowing them broadens our understanding of the meaning and nature of religion. The realities of the modern world significantly contribute to communication between representatives of different cultures. Religion is also studied within cultural geography, which studies how cultural processes spread. 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. God, in this regard, serves as a source of security and forgiveness. The SSRC is an independent, international, nonprofit organization. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Social Science Research Council 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. ), London: Tavistock, 85-126. This is an important critique, which draws on what I have called the first (critical) and the second (anthropological) approach to religion. . Peter Connolly. The method used was to compare the subjective experience with the intent of shaping the arrangement of religion itself from within the structure. So critics confuse an empirical inquiry (describing what religion is) with a normative inquiry (accounting for its status in the law). Other religions are sourced in man's rebellion against God and/or demonic influence. 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. Religion may be defined as "any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to supernatural power, whether that power be forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, or demons" (C. R. Ember, Ember, and Peregrine 2019, 500). b.) In brief, it is the study of religious phenomena in so far as they may be understood psychologically (Merkur 2005,165). 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 . Given this, we, however, also use other approaches especially comparative religion and philosophy of religionwhich we will discuss next. The idea is that one who experiences financial success is blessed and is thus favored by God. Thus, the bracketing means forgetting about beliefs of ones own that might endorse or conflict with what is being investigated. Its object is not personal, although is a necessary condition of the yoga. 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. Anthropologists, for example, legitimately study a key dimension of human experiencethe religious experiencein its diversity and unruliness. 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. Different approaches to religion education have been in place for a long time or developed more recently to meet growing religious and cultural plurality in European countries and schools. Psychology of religion is the application of the different psychological theories and methods to explain religious phenomena, which include the belief in God, religious experiences and behaviors, and spirituality. The other is Sri Aurobindo who brought a change to the vision of evolution of life into the divinity of life. But perhaps we should apply to religion something like Ludwig Wittgensteins theory of family resemblance. Which concept of religionif anydo we need in the law of the liberal democratic state? Ccile Laborde is Professor of Political Theory at University College London. 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. Your email address will not be published. Sociologists use a variety of methods to analyze culture. The dominant sense in which the contemporary study of religion is understood is the descriptive sense. 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. But it is necessary to be clear about what objectivity and subjectivity in religion mean. How can we best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of religion, non-establishment and the like? Throughout the film, various facets of Christianity are explored and that includes the role played by that religion during the colonization of territories by the European or Western colonial powers in the early centuries, particularly the role played by the . One contribution of St. Augustine was his theory that evil is the absence of good (which he adopted from the view of the Greek philosopher Plotinus on the nature of light and darkness). Sociology is one such approach that this essay will be looking at through its founding fathers Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. The Christian theologian, for example, may see a particular historical process as providential. This means, among others, that the philosophy of religion justifies claims by the strength and coherence of arguments. Methodologies provide a lense of analysis from which to view the field of religous studies. For the last four decades universities and schools have been acting in response to a constant , steady demand for courses upon the study of religion .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 . 3.7 Robert Marrett and Animatism. On a related note, the historical achievements of liberal secular states might be obscured if secularism is only perceived as a tool of colonial and imperial domination. Aside from being exploited, the workers were also dehumanized or alienated in the workplace. Still another difference is that while theology limits itself to its own internal theory of religion (its own account for its origins and functions), religious studies considers external theories of religion (accounts of the origins and functions of religion by other academic disciplines). Rowny Professor of Comparative Religions, University of California, Santa Barbara. Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified. Is Sri Aurobindo truly internal when we have the community of Auroville and a culture around him? Religion is a concept created by modern scholars and superimposed on a variety of different phenomena for a variety of motives. No consensus among scholars concerning the best way to study religion has developed, however. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. The most influential premodern work in comparative religion is the book The Golden Bough (1890) by James G. Frazer (1854-1941). 2. Box No. There are many ways of studying religions. To ask that the law embrace and describe the whole of social reality would be to yearn for a totalitarian law. There are doubts about how far there can be neutrality and objectivity in the study of religion. Thus, some political ideologies, such as communism and fascism, have been regarded as analogous to religion. Muller, an authority of Sanskrit (the classical religious language of India), urged that the study of religion should not be limited to the religions of the Mediterranean (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and that the great religions of the East should also be seriously studied. As stated earlier, French sociologist mile Durkheim (1858-1917) defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things" (1915). 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. Among the many faiths represented here are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. 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. Related to Freuds concept, the personal unconscious mind contains all our personal experiences that we are not aware of (because we have suppressed them); whilethe 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. The author as part of his degree course has studied these two vastly differing approaches. These different reasons might lead to different approaches to the study of religion. There are religions, however, in which even worship rituals are not central. One of the many reasons for this failure is that each discipline enlisted to study religion has its own distinctive methods and topics, and scholars often disagree about how to resolve the inevitable conflicts between these different intellectual perspectives. And subjectivity in religion mean anydo we need in the study of religious phenomena in so far as they be! 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