Religionists'Misconceptions: Replies to Sharma and Pals

Review of "What is Religion," Ed. by Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon, 2024

This self-consciously "nonconventional" (4) book consists of a series of conversations concerning the study of religion. Seventeen dialogues are initiated by way of a scholar offering a brief answer to the prompt "Religion is.... " These short definitional statements, never longer than a long paragraph, are in turn each followed by a reply of some seven to nine pages in length, each penned by another of the seventeen scholars included in this volume. Finally, the author of the definitional statement in question furnishes a response of some five to six pages to their colleague's reply. Each of the scholars who contributes to this volume thus writes a definitional statement, replies to that of another, and responds to the reply to their own. Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon, the editors of this volume, bookend this "set of textual conversations that reveal some of the tensions, fissures, and possibilities of religious studies" (5) with a preface (xi-xii) and brief introduction (1-5), to begin, and a final long appendix (297-353) that chronologically surveys the views of an additional thirty-three scholars regarding the definition of religion, furnished also with the editors' assessments of the same. The book, the editors state, is nonconventional for the fact that "the contributors all agreed to do some work, in public, at... sites of difference and possible disagreement" (4) around the question of how to define the term "religion" and, therefore, how to the shape and guide the academic study thereof. They intend the work for a readership of early-career scholars, also "the wider reading public as well as students in introductory classes" (xi), much like their previously coedited Religion in 5 Minutes (Equinox, 2017), but this time by soliciting the contributions of senior scholars in the field. The editorial strategy, they explain, consisted in "[stepping] back to let the contributors get on with it. We thus offer readers a sampling of the field, something to be read akin to how one reads a culture or an ethnography, and then [we] invite them to draw conclusions of their own about the state of the field today" (xi-xii). Finally, the dialogues or debates herein are designed to include the diverse voices of various scholars, "all of whom work in very different subspecialities, working with each other's attempts to say what they think religion is-or is not" (xi). To read through this entire book in an unbroken manner is somewhat burdensome, because the hands-off approach of the editors leaves readers with a somewhat eclectic collection that is not arranged thematically but alphabetically by the last name of the author of the definitional statement under question. A sensible reading strategy can overcome this difficulty, however, by

The demand for neutrality and impartiality in the modern study of religions has challenged the role of theology in defending religious truth. As post-modernity emerged, its philosophy sought to deconstruct modern philosophy and everything under its shell. The post-modern philosophy is sceptical against the notion of objectivity and favour for relativism. Despite the increasing awareness of religious diversity, study of religions in modern and postmodern context resumes into reducing religion as human subjective experience. This paper, therefore, seeks to discuss the dilemma concerning religious truth that marked the gap between the contemporary study of religions and theology. The author alluded to the views of contemporary theologians who struggled to reform the way theology has been taught during modernity and post-modernity under the various nomenclatures; comparative theology, world theology, and global theology. Nevertheless, does the new theology embrace the passion for religious truth? Using the interpretive and the qualitative research paradigm, the paper examines the question of religious truth by referring to a selected theme under Kalam from within the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish theology. The paper supports its findings by referring to examples in the Kalam discourse that demonstrate the viability of intellection exercises and intellectual veracity in defending religious truth at this age of religious plurality

As progressive beings we are endowed with faculties such as reasoning, discerning, probing, inquiring, critiquing and exploring. Nowadays we could proudly say that 'sky is not the limit' and human aspirations is such that to get to know and get into the unexplored terrains and conquer everything at one point of time termed as 'mysteries', now a reality. With the application of our critical and creative faculties and questioning and exploring capacities we keep moving on to greater heights. Inquiring and questioning mind and reasoning power are the greatest components endowed in human beings that enable and extend the urge in us to move forward and higher. Homo sapiens per se have been innovative, creative and ground breaking. Science and technology contributed to approximate these achievements. Parallel to these developments, side by side, religion co-exists. Organized religion from time to time instills or refills its adherent not to drift from the basic tenets, rituals, religious practices, traditions and belief system. The belief in God as the center of being continues and for this the organized religion sustains their belief in varied ways. In trials and tribulations and frustrations and hopelessness, the leverage of hope is extended only by religion apart from cementing the

The task of this work is to offer an account of religion from the view of the social sciences. Religion is arguably an indispensable part of man. The society on the other hand, its understanding and interpretation is the function of the social sciences. However, both religion and the social sciences have different methodologies and parameters for evaluation and interpretation. While both have overlapping ends, it is difficult to superimpose one on the other. Thus, this work seeks to have an outsider's view of religion by way of an evaluation; the social sciences in this case, being the interrogator and interpreter.

Journal for the academic study of religion, 2024

This research paper is a well-structured arrangement for the understudies who have as of now done an introductory course in philosophy. Each article on "philosophy of religion" presents a centre common subject in contemporary philosophy and offers understudies an available but considerable transition from basic to higher-level academic work in that subject. The arrangement is accessible to non-specialists, and each segment spurs and elucidates the problems and positions presented. An orientating title briefly presents its topic and reminds users of any vital fabric they ought to have held from a commonplace initial course. A significant consideration is given to explaining the central philosophical issues of a subject and the most competing solutions and arguments for those arrangements. The essential point of this research article is to educate understudies within the fundamental problems, positions, and contentions of modern reasoning instead of convincing understudies of a single position. The presumption which underlies this trust is that total non-partisanship in reasoning is not one or the other conceivable nor alluring. Philosophical work continuously reflects as per Philosophy of Religion and most profound commitments. Such commitments, be that as it may, don't block an honest to goodness endeavouring for basic trustworthiness.

Consensus, 2018

This article looks at the two faces of religion: one potentially divisive and the other holistic and nothing but unifying.

Recent calls for better policing of the borders of the field ring hollow to my mind. What is fascinating about religion are the borderlands. (Winnifred Fallers Sullivan) To use category names should be a commitment to tracing the assemblages in which these categories gain a momentary hold. (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing) COURSE DESCRIPTION The category of religion has been described as "the most ideological of Western creations." It is a modern western concept, born perhaps in 1799, yet most of what it is thought to refer to is non-modern or non-western. At the same time, it seems an inescapable part of articulating what it means to be human here and now. What does it reveal and obscure? Can it be thought about in a non-mystifying way? This course weaves together a critical history of the academic discipline of religious studies with explorations of everyday " religion-making " in the broader culture and our own lives. We engage classic and contemporary theories of the nature, history and value of religion in order to develop a critical understanding of the concept as well as of the phenomena which are made to bear its name. Many other categories constitutive of western modernity interlock with the concept of religion, too – not least the secular. Understanding the travails of religious studies offers insight into other, similarly fraught disciplines, as indeed into the nature of disciplinary projects as a whole. A reflective awareness of the concept of religion and its study offers incisive perspectives on politics, gender, ethics and identity. But what has recently been called " religion-making " isn't just something scholars do. We experience religion as a natural kind because it is woven into our individual, social and even political experience. Religions are made and unmade by participants as well as by critics, by high and pop culture, by individuals and communities negotiating complicated landscapes of identity, by those who claim to be " spiritual but not religious, " and even by the law. The academic study of religion is not an escape from these wider practices of making and unmaking " religion " and " religions " but a privileged place for intervention in the broader theoretical and practical challenges of our time.

distinguishes man from the other a n i r n a l~.~ The study of man cannot be complete unless it includes the study of his religion, for it is a very important and outstanding feature of human life. The religious faith and practices are intimately connected with human nature and life in general. However unrefined a religion might have been in its origin, and however gross the superstitions with which it has often been associated, its omnipresence and centrality in the history of humanity are facts to be reckoned with.3 The religious perceptions and sensitivity helped man a lot to keep alive and hopeful in his hazardous journey through history.4 In many cases the bonds of religion have proved stronger than the bonds of race or climate or even descent.

Religion, 1989

Just as Joseph Strayer argues in On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State that the modern state began in the Middle Ages, so J. Samuel Preus argues that modern `criticism', or explanation, of religion began as early as the 16th century. It began with the attempt to account for all religions, not just for Judaism and Christianity. Preus ably traces the shifts in the criticism : from accounting religiously for all religions (Jean Bodin, Lord Herbert of Cherbury) to accounting non-religiously for all religions save Judaism and Christianity (Bernard Fontenelle, Giambattista Vico) to accounting nonreligiously for all religions (David Hume, Auguste Comte, Edward Tylor, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud) ; from accounting for the `origin', or initial time and place, of religion to accounting for the `cause', or recurrent source, of religion (Hume on)' to accounting for the persistence of religion (Durkheim, Freud). At the same time Preus argues that the prime issue has been that of cause (pp. xvii-xviii). Theologians, or more broadly `religionists', account for religion supernaturally : through either revelation or innate religiosity. Social scientists account for religion naturalistically : psychologically, sociologically, or anthropologically. Preus is doubtless right to say that what he considers a single social scientific paradigm' has provided an alternative to the religious one. But he is wrong to say that religionists have clung stalwartly to a supernatural account of religion : `The terms of the tension between a science and a theology of religion have changed in the century since Tylor, but the tension remains in the seemingly irreducible conflict between naturalistic and "transcendental" explanations of religion' (p. 153). On the contrary, religionists have responded by proposing either a naturalistic cause of religion or none at all, in which case the question of cause becomes irrelevant and even improper. Moreover, the , non-causal' response appropriates strategies from seculardom, as Preus notes in passing (p. 209). Contrary to Preus (pp. xviii-xix, 210), religionists are as much in touch with the rest of academia as social scientists. Their ends are incontestably isolationist, but their means are not. They deploy the most sophisticated of secular techniques. It is not the Bible but Ludwig Wittgenstein, W. V. O. Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Richard Rorty, and Jacques Derrida that they invoke. Alternatively, they cite various social scientists