Religious Studies: A Textbook

✍ Scribed by Adrián Slavkovský; Adrian Slavkovsky

• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 118
• Series: Uni Slovakia
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This textbook offers a brief overview of the basic approaches to the scientific scrutiny of religion. To remain uninterested in examining religion is more difficult than examining any other object of research. In relation to issues of religion, we cannot stand as impartial observers, because we are always somehow involved. Therefore, this book emphasizes not only knowledge of religions, but also how to find ways to get closer to impartiality. It offers an overview of topics, questions, and context, rather than a coherent theory.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Introduction
1. What is Religious Studies and Religion
1.1 What Do Religious Studies Deal With? What Is Religion?
1.2 Why Study Religion?
1.3 Who and How Do We Observe Religion?
2. Methodological Approaches to the Study of Religion
2.1 Theological Approach
2.2 Philosophical Approach
2.3 Religious Approaches
3. The Inside Perspective versus the Outside Perspective
3.1 Information versus Experience
3.2 Participant and Observer
3.3 The Experiences of Others and Claims to Veracity
4. Theories about the Origin and Development of Religions
4.1 Motifs of Interest in the Origin of Religion
4.2. Older Evolutional Theories
4.3 The Latest Approaches
5. Comparative Religious Studies
5.1 The Role of Comparison
5.2 Aspects, Levels, and Types of Comparison
6. Sociology of Religion
6.1 Formation of the Sociology of Religion
6.2 Peter Ludwig Berger – Dialectical Understanding of the Relation between Man and Society
6.3 Contemporary Trends
7. Psychology of Religion
7.1 The Beginnings of the Psychology of Religion; William James
7.2 Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung
7.3 Examples of Psychological Approaches
8. The Cognitive Approach to Religion
8.1 What Is the Cognitive Approach?
8.2 Religious Experience and Ritual
8.3 The Role of Emotions in Religion in Terms of Cognitive Approach
9. Hermeneutic Religious Studies
9.1 Deeper Understanding
9.2 Notable Figures in the History of Hermeneutics
9.3 Other Aspects of Hermeneutics and Their Application to Religion
10. Phenomenology of Religion
10.1 Attentive Perception Instead of Deduction
10.2 Representatives of the Phenomenology of Religion
10.3 Cryptomorphous Religious Phenomena
11. New Religiosity
11.1 New Religiosity – a Challenge to Contemporary Society
11.2 Causes and Signs
12. Religion in the Contemporary World
12.1 Religion and Politics
12.2 Religion and Economics
12.3 Religion and Science
Bibliography