Methods in My Life

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The invention of Religious Studies was a personal thing to me. When I say ‘Religious Studies’ I mean the study of religion as an aspect of human existence in a cross-cultural way and from a polymethodic or multidisciplinary perspective. Though there had been the comparative study of religion in my youth, it was not yet really combined with the social or human sciences. It was only with the combination of the study of the histories of religions with the social sciences that you get what I call the modern ‘Religious Studies’. Any tradition has its roots and its formation: these are two differing periods. For example, the roots of Hinduism lie in many places in the Vedic hymns, in early Brahmanism, in sramanic movements, in folk mythology, in temples, images, pilgrimages, caste. So though Hinduism has ancient roots it does not really gel together till the first to third centuries CE. Similarly though Religious Studies has its roots in the nineteenth century it scarcely is formed until the 1960s.KeywordsReligious StudyReligious ExperienceMystical ExperienceFine EducationChristian TheologyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.