We also have Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto philosophies; instead of Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto theologies. This can often lead to conflicts, including those that arise on religious grounds. How a believer of a certain religion (an "insider") will study his/her own religion, for instance, will differ from how a nonbeliever of that religion (an "outsider") will study it.Their motivations and methods will be different. Disclaimer: This is an example of a student written essay.Click here for sample essays written by our professional writers. (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. The Comparative Study of Religions World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Fourth Edition, considers one religion at a time, chapter by chapter. village and nad level bring in solidarity and unity among different social segments . The journal is a very significant endeavor since, until we launched it, there was no journal in the study of religion that has focused exclusively on developing a critical approach. Approaches to Studying Religion (three courses): Three courses, one in each area, covering more than one major religious tradition; level II or level III courses may be used to fulfill this requirement; a general education course in . Aurobindo offers no guidance upon other religions as his account is purely personal. 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 . 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. 5 Evangelical Christian. Looking for a flexible role? Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. Like most abstract concepts, the concept of religion is a construction projected onto the world, but one consequence of this large-scale projection may well be that our world has genuinely come to exhibit it. Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified. Your email address will not be published. Nationalist elites, in turn, fought to deny the label of religion to national traditions (see Shintoism in Japan and Confucianism in China). The fast, they abstain from sex, they walk on fire, perform self-flagellation, or nail themselves on crosses. It may perhaps intensify your religious experience. As a social institution, religion is a pattern of social action organized around the beliefs and practices that people develop to answer questions about the meaning of existence. India is a multi-cultural and a diverse nation with a flourishing history of pluralism that has been thriving for thousands of years. Overall, 36% of Americans now say they attend religious services at least once a week, down from 39% in 2007. The term phenomenology refers first to the attempt to describe religious phenomena in a way that brings out the beliefs and attitudes of the adherents of the religion under investigation but without either endorsing or rejecting the beliefs and attitudes. London and New York, 1999. 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. Nevertheless, common to all these different terms and their respective definitions of approach was the motivation to dispense with theologically orientated normative constructions in the study of religion. . 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). Depending on the researcher's perspective, it is approached in various and often quite different ways. In this . Barths distinction attempts to draw a line between the transcendent, as it reveals itself to humans, and religion, as a human product involved in the response to revelation. Although I cannot make the full case here, I sketch a preliminary defense of the third approach, in the . 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. Rituals, practices and texts focused on death provide the basis for comparative study of Asian and Western religious approaches to the meaning and mystery of death as it confronts individuals and communities. For Jung, religious experiences are manifestations of the archetypes in the collective unconscious in our own consciousness. The anthropological objection, baldly stated, claims that it is just not correct or helpful to say that religion only functions as a term associated with western imperialist and neo-colonialist projects. The works of both Sri Aurobindo and Ninian Smart shows two drastic and completely different approaches to religion. 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? 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. 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). One of the significant sociological findings of Max Weber was the significant contribution of that the Calvinist religious ideas had on the development of the economic system of capitalism. 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. Sociologists today employ three primary theoretical perspectives: the symbolic interactionist perspective, the functionalist perspective, and the conflict perspective. Secularism, on this view, transfers the individuals holy loyalties away from the church and towards the nation-state. Particularly, this study used an interdisciplinary approach, that is, a combination of religious and social approaches. These (and others) are all legitimate uses of the concept of religion. 1 Review. 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 c.) the truth or falsity of religion. The distinction, however, is not an absolute one, for, as has been noted, descriptions of religion may sometimes incorporate theories about religion that imply something about the truth or other normative aspects of some or all religions. 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. 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). Sociology is one such approach that this essay will be looking at through its founding fathers Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. 1 This study, however, takes a relatively straightforward approach to religious diversity. 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. Kujenga Amani facilitates the exchange of ideas about diverse aspects of peacebuilding in Africa. We also study religion in order to learn more about how different aspects of human lifepolitics, science, literature, art, law, economicshave been and continue to be shaped by changing religious notions of, for example, good and evil, images of the deity and the divine, salvation and punishment, etc. Items is a space for engagement with insights from the work of the Council and the social sciences. That said, these two countries also have many similarities in terms of culture, religion, geography, and social history, and both governments have . This involves identifying a plurality of normative analogies for religion. Accordingly, Calvinists believed in predestination, the view that God has already decided on who will enter heaven or not. It is the logic of Natures process. Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? Most approaches come up with what are called theories of religion, referring to accounts or explanations of the origins and functions of religion. Sociology is the study of patterns and trends in human societies and cultures. It is an illusion because it is just a product of the human imagination. All work is written to order. Although I cannot make the full case here, I sketch a preliminary defense of the third approach, in the context of recent debates in political theory. This is a legitimate perspective from the standpoint of faith. As noted, there is a specific pedagogical 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. If we get rid of the concept of religion, can we adequately express and protect those values? What may be the way forward in the teaching and definition of religion is to accept the singularity of each religion and each individuals faith and seek ways in which they can be accommodated within a safe international environment that moves away from empirical definitions. 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. This approach can be better understood in his ritual dimension, involvement with worshipping, meditations, pilgrimages, sacrifices and healing activities .Of course doctrinal and philosophical dimension is to be taken in consideration without living behind the experimental and emotional dimension and the important ethical and legal dimension. On the other hand, some view it as a way of purifying religion from the idolatry or worship of human-made objects. Such struggles were political through and through, and it is impossible to discern any common core or essence to all the world religions, as W. C. Smith pointed out in 1962. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. by Ccile Laborde February 5, 2014. Here religion involves subjectivity in the sense of individual experience. 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. Methodologies provide a lense of analysis from which to view the field of religous studies. Phenomenology or Religion (3) Study of consciousness and experiences. 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. Fall 2005. Since becoming aware of our unconscious makes us a whole person (a fully realized Self), religion is thus seen by Jung as something positive (Merkur 2005, 177). The Essay Writing ExpertsUK Essay Experts. A&C Black, Jan 1, 1999 - Social Science - 286 pages. Even a commonly accepted definition of religion has proved difficult to establish, though not for lack of trying. As stated earlier, French sociologist mile Durkheim (1858-1917) defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things" (1915). Like Muslim reformists' approach of reform, which attempted to reconstruct Islamic religious thought in the light of modern science and knowledge, Christian neo-orthodoxy insisted that Christianity itself needs continually to be rethought and that theology must engage seriously with the . O . Most of the major thinkers recognized in this area are also those recognized in the sociology of religion like Durkheim and Weber. 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 instance, a student of Christian theology is a Christian; but a student of religious studies studying Shintoism is usually not a Shintoist. Accordingly, Calvinists believed in predestination, the view that God has already decided on who will enter heaven or not. 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 The field of religion/worldview is a broadly defined area of study. Sociologists use a variety of methods to analyze culture. He explains that such experience definitely will change positions on previous views regarding religious tradition. The dominant sense in which the contemporary study of religion is understood is the descriptive sense. Conflict sometimes arises because the committed point of view is likely to begin from a more conservative stance, accepting at face value the scriptural accounts of events, whereas the secular historian may be more skeptical, especially of records of miraculous events. Sociology of religion, on the other hand, studies religious beliefs, practices, and organizations using the theories and methods of the discipline of sociology. 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 . His account is purely personal style manual or other sources if you have any questions - 286.! Say they attend religious services at least once a week, down from 39 % 2007! 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