This course introduces students to the variety of academic approaches to the study of religion and to the procedures and sources used in writing academic papers in religious studies. After studying the indigenous Australians, Durkheim claimed that the totems (sacred objects used as emblems or symbols of a group of people, family, clan, or tribe) that the aborigines worship represented their own conceptions of a unified group or society. Office hours: MW 3-4, TTh 1-2:30. and by appointment. II. Geographers study religions and their development based on the role that geography intersects with other important social components within a human geographic approach. Describe a friend, acquaintance, or relative whose approach to religion is different than yours. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. It also depends heavily on the motives the researcher brings to his or her investigation of religious or worldview issues. In brief, it is the study of religious phenomena in so far as they may be understood psychologically (Merkur 2005,165). There are two main reasons for this suspicion. This suggests that the works of these thinkers cut across the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. 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. The growth of various disciplines in the 19th century, notably psychology and sociology, stimulated a more analytic approach to religions, while at the same time theology became more sophisticated and, in a sense, scientific as it began to be affected by and thus to make use of historical and other methods. 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. This means, among others, that the philosophy of religion justifies claims by the strength and coherence of arguments. In fact, the religions of civilized races evolved from the animism of the lower races. In this . Sociology in general looks at people's . Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) defines religion as "a unified system of beliefs and Egalitarian theorists of religious freedom, from this perspective, are right to seek to identify the normative grounds on which certain beliefs and practices call for state protection (or state restraint, in the case of non-establishment). The stage from man to super being is the next which depends from the approach of the achievement on the evolution on earth. Sociology in general looks at people's . Registered office: Creative Tower, Fujairah, PO Box 4422, UAE. Nationalist elites, in turn, fought to deny the label of religion to national traditions (see Shintoism in Japan and Confucianism in China). 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. 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). 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. Is it possible to understand a faith without holding it? Can we categorize all religions within Ninian Smart definitions? a creation of capitalism, for Weber it is the other way roundcapitalism is largely due to religion, more specifically, the Calvinist religion. The only appropriate scholarly stance towards this object is one that is critical and skeptical. 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. 42 - 72. foster a respectful awareness of the significance of the beliefs and practices for the faith member. Ontology. 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. Yet the strategy of disaggregating religion has a further, more portentous implication for normative political theory. 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). The word anthropology means science of human beings or humanity. 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. In the Australian context, the interdisciplinary pedagogy that defines global studies is gaining wider acceptance as a coherent and necessary approach to the study of global change. Much of the interesting work done in anthropology, sociology, and religious studies departments, for example, draws on both the first and the second approach). 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. 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. Hence the proposed shift from an analogizing to a disaggregating strategy. 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. Significance is reported at the p < .10 level. (Ninian Smart,pp10-12,Dimension of the sacred an anatomy of the worlds beliefs ,Harper Collins Publisher 1196) We see from Smarts classifactory account, Smarts perspective in sustaining a phenomenological perception to the methodology of approach to the study, is far different from the approach that Sri Aurobindo use. Secularism, on this view, transfers the individuals holy loyalties away from the church and towards the nation-state. (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. As we examine the different disciplinal approaches to the study of religion, we shall briefly touch on some of the external theories of religion. 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. 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. Sociology studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. by Cristina Echeverri-Pineda and Mateo Villamizar-Chaparro. Each of these approaches can be applied to the study of religious diversity. Methodologies in religious studies are the interpretive models on which the analysis of religious phenomena and resources are discussed. Durkheim was more interested in the unifying effect of religion among members of a society. 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. India is a multi-cultural and a diverse nation with a flourishing history of pluralism that has been thriving for thousands of years. 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. For the workers to bear their miserable and unfulfilling life, the capitalists created various belief-systems, foremost of which was religion, for the working class to see their state as something positive and justified. village and nad level bring in solidarity and unity among different social segments . Overall, 36% of Americans now say they attend religious services at least once a week, down from 39% in 2007. Introduces students to the study of religion, world religious traditions and ethics through an exploration of death and dying. 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). They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Department of Religion Pearson 211 Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397 Email: religion@swarthmore.edu Phone: (610) 328-8045 Fax: (610) 328-7687 These questions within Smarts Classifactory account would help to define a religion. This is a legitimate perspective from the standpoint of faith. O . The fast, they abstain from sex, they walk on fire, perform self-flagellation, or nail themselves on crosses. The gods play a merely subsidiary role, for example, in most phases of Theravada (Way of the Elders) Buddhism. As we examine the different disciplinal approaches to the study of religion, we shall briefly touch on some of the external theories of religion. In this lesson, we will discuss the difference between the scientific and the religious approach and will look at some examples of each. Besides their evolutionary assumption about religion, the followers of evolutionary theory show overwhelming Eurocentric biases. 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. (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. 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. 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. 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