Contemporary Study Of Religion Research Articles

Contemporary study of religion

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“The Field, at the Moment, Is Up for Redefinition”: Twenty Five Years of Manufacturing Religion

Abstract Reflecting on the shape of the current field, this essay argues for the continued relevance for Manufacturing Religion, a book first published in 1997; describing the conditions of its writing, publication, and reception, it provides a variety of current examples to illustrate that the critique of scholarship that conceives of religion as a unique or deeply personal experience, one that defies explanation and merely requires understanding or even appreciation, continues to be an important critical tool in the contemporary study of religion.

Review: Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion, by Aled Thomas

Review: <i>Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion</i>, by Aled Thomas

The Study of Religion on the Other Side of the Good Religion/Bad Religion Binary

One of the most resolute dichotomies in the modern and contemporary study of religion is that between good/bad religions. The bases for making such judgments are fluid, but the outcome is generally recognizable; “good” religions and good religious practitioners adhere to the expectations and norms of the bourgeois modern. The reasons for the endurance of the good/bad religion dichotomy are historical, rooted in the rise of the study of religion as an academic discipline, globally and in the United States; economic, reflecting recent trends in giving to higher education; and ideological. But in Meir Kahane, Shaul Magid upends the good/bad distinction, using a “bad” religious actor, in this case, a virulent anti-Black racist, demagogue, and violent street fighter as a lens through which to explore recent Jewish history in the US and Israel. Magid's steadfast refusal to render Kahane safely other to this broader religious story is a powerful challenge to scholars of religion.

Decolonizing the Study of Religion

As with many other subject areas within the humanities, the contemporary study of religion is the product of European colonial history and remains firmly embedded in what Anibal Quijano (2007) described as the ‘colonial matrix of power’. This article explores questions about how to respond to these structures of history — in particular what the concept of ‘decolonization’ may mean and how it may be applied within the context of the study of religion. Such decolonization should be approached as not simply an exercise in ‘diversity’ but rather as a challenge to (and potentially a dismantling of) the field of study. Such an approach is relevant not only to those scholars who identify within the disciplinary boundaries of the ‘study of religion’ (or religious studies), but much wider to the broad academic study of (what is thought of as) ‘religion’ within humanities and social sciences. This article is, in short, an attempt to map out some of the key points about such a decolonization, in terms of curriculum and research practice, on the disciplinary level and within the wider institutional structures of the academy.

The Social Construction of Reality (1966) Revisited: Epistemology and Theorizing in the Study of Religion

AbstractThis paper takes the social constructivist approach, formulated by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as a starting point for an investigation into epistemology and theorizing in the contemporary study of religion. It discusses various strands of scholarship in dialogue with social constructivism and questions in particular the reductionism of radical constructivist positions. Exploring the boundaries of the classical social constructivist paradigm, the article argues that students of religion should consider the implication of social, historical, embodied and material structures in the production of knowledge about religion. For that purpose, it draws on various soft realist approaches to stress the importance of remaining attentive to positionality (reflecting on the sites from where we theorize) and contextuality (reflecting on the inter-relation of discourse and materiality) in theorizing “religion”. Finally, the article suggests that soft realist positions can be integrated in a slightly broadened social constructivist framework for the study of religion.

Taxonomy Construction and the Normative Turn in Religious Studies

Jonathan Z. Smith contends that a taxonomic agenda underlies the study of religion. Before Smith, structuralist scholars saw it as their task to uncover the roots of human taxonomic arrangements that present themselves as natural. Drawing somewhat anachronistically on Smith’s taxonomic model, I argue that underlying investigative categories posed by structural anthropologists are operative strategies of subjective value and valuation. I employ Smith to amend structuralist classificatory paradigms and to speak to questions of normativity, values, and concealed agendas in the contemporary study of religion. Smith’s comparative program serves as a fertile territory of encounter between divergent religious studies subfields. In short, I argue that although the normative turn in religious studies has generally succeeded in deconstructing appeals to scholarly objectivity, it faces challenges along other parameters.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith: Love, Science, and the Study of Religion

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the influential scholar of Islam and reformer of the modern comparative study of religion, provoked controversy in arguing that one cannot understand a religion without studying persons, or persons without studying their faith. Scholarship has largely neglected his further claim that faith cannot be adequately known except in the context of friendship, understood as a mode of love. Here, I explain Smith’s notion of love as constitutive of rationality and discuss how it emerges out of his critique of the norms of objectivity and impersonality long thought to be characteristic of the natural sciences. I conclude by suggesting the relevance of Smith’s notion of love to the contemporary study of religion.

Hindu Theology as Churning the Latent

The term Hindu philosophy is often preferred over Hindu theology, but I argue theology better characterizes certain Hindu texts than philosophy. I give a theoretical account of Hindu theology through an examination of Viśvanātha Cakravartin's (eighteenth-century Caitanya Vaiṣṇava-Hindu) analysis of the churning of the ocean of milk, an important Purāṇic story, showing how it illuminates the role of the systematic intellectual engagement with, and meditation on, sacred text. I further argue for a definition of a Hindu theologian as someone trained in a disciplinary tradition, who seeks knowledge of ultimate reality (Brahman), and who seeks to follow the ethical requirements of a Hindu tradition. I examine the difference between what I have called first- and second-order theology, and look at the role of tradition (saṃpradāya) in the formation of theology. This article aims to spark further debate about the category Hindu theology in the contemporary study of religion.

Via Facebook to Jerusalem

Social media contain a significant potential as a research tool in the scholarly study of contemporary religion. This article, therefore, does not feed into the thematic field of “online ethnography” further, but is instead an attempt to utilize the online sphere as constructive research tools to gather more thorough ethnographic data in the field. Approaching Facebook as a toolbox rather than an object, this article is an attempt to demystify social media in general and Facebook in particular. Utilizing these media forms as efficient tools throughout the research process, the article looks at primarily two phases of the process, pre fieldwork and post-fieldwork, and explores the various components of Facebook in combination with these two phases. It is argued that Facebook represents a “Hub Keeper,” which is a generic term referring to three primary methodological functions: it is a Gate-Keeper that enables identification and recruitment of interviewees; it is a hub containing a variety of data; and, it is a Gateway for validation of data.

The Contemporary Study of Religion and Spirituality Among the Elderly: A Critique

Much of the contemporary study of the intersection of aging, religion, and health is based on the assumption that religiousness and spirituality can be accurately measured by certain scales and measures. The further assumption is that these scales and measures are not biased toward any particular form of religious expression and can be used to measure these domains irrespective of the particular faith tradition of the respondent. I argue that indeed many of the most popular scales do contain a clear, underlying set of assumptions about what constitutes religiousness and spirituality and that this understanding is shaped by the same Protestant traditions that have shaped American civilization. By examining several of these scales, and then comparing the assumptions contained in the questions about the meaning of religiousness and spirituality with assumptions about these domains found in traditional Judaism, I come to two conclusions. First, that the scales do reflect a particular religious tradition, and second, that to understand the role of faith in the lives of older persons we must understand the specific faith traditions shared by the elders under study.

Exploring We Will Go: The Investigation of Religion and Spirituality in Older Populations (Reflections on Glicksman's “The Contemporary Study of Religion and Spirituality Among the Elderly”)

The field of research in religion and spirituality within aging is expanding and there is need for much more knowledge integration. At the same time, it is valuable to acknowledge some unique aspects to inquiry in this area. Researcher considerations include awareness of cultural biases, limitations in all methods of research, the influence of religious traditions and external environments that favor or marginalize this research, and the danger of reductionism through definitional limits. Spirituality particularly is difficult to trimly capture in categories. Thus, holding open the possibility of intuitive insight for greater knowledge and maintaining a goal of compassionate understanding can help us end our journey at the beginning point of our exploration and know it in a way that is rich and deep, as if seeing it for the first time.

Predicaments in Researching Spirituality and Religion: A Response to Glicksman's “Contemporary Study of Religion and Spirituality Among the Elderly”

Glicksman's perceptive critique calls attention to significant recurrent issues in the study of religion and spirituality that point to the need for humility by all who engage in it. Among these issues are implicit questions: What is spirituality? Is it a universal feature of humanity even though its manifestations are very diverse? How do researchers' assumptions and answers to those questions affect the methodologies they use to study religion and spirituality? Is theology relevant? Examples of overlapping scriptures of Judaism and evangelical Protestantism show how easily theological doctrines and philosophical values are misinterpreted by outsiders and how important they are for understanding the faith-related behavior of any group of people. Multidisciplinary research on the spirituality of people from all religions and none, global comparisons of the results, and painstaking analyses of the findings can bring us closer to comprehending the mysteries of spirituality and using them for the benefit of humanity.

Liminal Subjectivities and Religious Change: Circumscribing Giddens for the Study of Contemporary American Religion

Observers of American religion have noted significant changes in the last 50 years. Many of the current theories interpreting these changes cite the writings of the British social theorist Anthony Giddens. Such works suggest that we are living in a post-traditional, ‘late modern’ society in which self-identity, community, and the codes we live by are no longer ascribed, but reflexively made and re-made in continuous ‘projects of the self’. This article seeks to circumscribe late modernity theory for the study of contemporary religion, examining its usefulness and limitations. I argue that the disembedding structures of late modernity—while uneven in their effects on individuals from different social locations—create ‘liminal subjectivities’ among certain classes and groups. This state of being ‘betwixt and between’ social locations places individuals into new and sometimes ephemeral social networks, which in turn may result in them seeking out and experimenting with new religious groups, beliefs, and practices.

Schicksalsanalyseand Religion Studies

The contemporary study of religion has benefited greatly from dialogues with depth psychology and psychiatry. In this study I consider the work of the Hungarian-born Swiss psychiatrist Leopold Szondi (1893–1986) as a major resource for the study of religion. While not well known in the English-speaking world, Szondi was an eminent medical scholar who produced, under conditions of political persecution, war, and exile, a large, magisterial body of literature known as the Analysis of Destiny (Schicksalsanalyse), which remains largely untranslated. The aim of this essay is (1) to present Szondi’s theory of religion in its biographical and historical context and (2) to discuss specific concepts in his theory, namely, those of the familial unconscious, Cain-Moses polarity, and pontifical ego. These three themes are chosen because they reflect Szondi’s pioneering pedigree studies, his clarification of the psychiatric aspects of epilepsy, and his transpersonal synthesis of depth psychology. The familial unconscious is presented in terms of his concept of genotropism and applied to the symbolic forms of tribal religion. The Cain-Moses polarity is addressed as a paroxysmal-epileptoid ground of evil and justice within the psychology of monotheism. The pontifical ego, representing religious experience at the highest level of relatedness and symbolized by the bridge, is evaluated on the bases of the Indo-Persian and Latin traditions of the sacred bridge. As a systematic psychiatry bearing a religious depth psychology, Szondi’s work has both historical significance and relevance to the contemporary study of religion. He has developed a wide-ranging approach to understanding the psychological, metaphysical, and theological aspects of religious experience.

Part One: the hermeneutics of modern religious education

Hermeneutical reflection on the nature, process, and scope of understanding tends to flourish whenever standard procedures of interpretation begin to falter. The contemporary study of religion is a case in point: conflicting results reflect a lack of consensus regarding appropriate methods of investigation. As a result, hermeneutics enjoys an increasingly significant role in religious and theological exploration. The discipline of religious education, despite constant wrestling with the ambiguity of religion, has not followed suit: it possesses no developed and sustained tradition of hermeneutical deliberation. This attempt to open up hermeneutical debate within the field of religious education begins by identifying romanticism, post‐modernism and critical realism as three key perspectives within contemporary hermeneutical theory (Bleicher, 1982; Jeanrond, 1994; Mueller‐Vollmer, 1986; Palmer, 1969; Thiselton, 1980, 1992). This article offers an account of the hermeneutics implicit in religious education from 1960 to the present, arguing that the subject has—at considerable cost to its integrity—drawn uncritically on the traditions of romanticism and post‐modernism. A second article will propose a critical theory for religious education rooted in the hermeneutics of critical realism.

Reflexive Modernity and the Religious Body

There are a growing number of attempts to reconsider the nature and role of contemporary religion with reference to the issues of 'postmodernity' and 'postmodernism'. Against these, it is suggested here that efforts to reconstruct the study of religion within the framework of an assumption that we are entering a postmodern social order would be fundamentally misconceived. While the emergence of features within the present social order are acknowledged, which undermine major components of the modern project, and are manifest as problematizations of the questions of reality and meaning which concern the postmodernists, it is not accepted here that this order itself is in a state of decay. Instead, that postmodernity is a fundamentally modern construct is argued, how the very idea of postmodernity becomes possible is explored, suggesting that it is, in part, the product of a process of 'disembodiment' which has gradually come to dominate Western cultures since the time of the Protestant Reformation. Postmodernism is characterized by a mentalism which ignores the anthropological in reality of what we term the religious body; the necessary implication of embodiment in the human construction of meaning and identity. It is proposed therefore, that the study of contemporary religion should be shaped not by postmodernism but by an awareness of both the reality-threatening impulses of reflexive modernity and the continuing anthropological reality of the religious body.

The Early and the Contemporary Study of Religion: Editorial Foreword

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Early and the Contemporary Study of Religion: Editorial ForewordEverett Cherrington HughesEverett Cherrington Hughes Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 60, Number S6May, 1955Supplement: The Early and the Contemporary Study of Religion Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/221649 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jean-Michel Chapoulie Everett C. Hughes and the Development of Fieldwork in Sociology, Urban Life 15, no.3-43-4 (Sep 2016): 259–298.https://doi.org/10.1177/089124168701500301