Discipline Of Religious Studies Research Articles

Animal spirit: other bodies in relation

ABSTRACT This thematic issue provides provocation to the way in which other-than-human agencies are taken up in the discipline of religious studies and/or in relation to religious themes. It also considers what studies in religion can offer other disciplines grappling with other-than-human agencies. The articles in this issue explore the role of embodiment and a range of knowledge and perception systems as they appear, (de)limit, enable and make knowable relations with other-than-human bodies, especially other animal bodies. Going beyond discussions of nonhuman animals as cyphers, metaphors or symbols for human belief or worldviews, this issue’s focus is the ethics of living and relating in a multi-epistemological world with other (animal) bodies. These questions are particularly relevant at a time of a global environmental crisis that threatens all life.

Unlearning - Buddhism and the Public Understanding of Buddhism

This paper focusses on two popular book projects that sought to communicate Buddhism’s variety and complexity to non-specialists. The first emerged from a radio series that the author was asked to write and present for the BBC World Service in the mid-1990s, entitled The Way of the Buddha. A book from the series followed, published by Oneworld. The second was an edited book that also slotted into a series, published by Equinox - Buddhism in 5 Minutes. The paper is an exercise in self-reflexivity, in the context of two demands that are placed on academics within religious studies. The first of these is the government’s insistence that academic research should have an impact on ‘the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life’. The second is the lack of religious literacy within society and the demands placed on academics working within religious studies to address it. This short paper will, therefore, concentrate on the aims, method, structure and content of each book in the light of these demands. It will also explore the potential of such projects and the issues they raise for the discipline of religious studies and our role as academics.

A Normative Turn in the Study of Religions?

Abstract In his book Why Study Religion? ethicist and philosopher Richard B. Miller criticizes the discipline of religious studies for being negligent about the fundamental goal of its academic pursuits. In this review essay, the authors challenge Miller’s diagnosis by arguing that scholars of religion do share a common goal and that the state of affairs bemoaned by Miller is healthier than he admits. The essay raises doubts concerning his selection of six “methodologies” that supposedly represent the field and it challenges Miller’s interpretation of Jonathan Z. Smith’s famous comparative analysis of the Jonestown massacre. The essay proposes a different distinction between goals and values in research and critically reviews the four goals/values proposed by Miller, three of which appear to represent business as usual. The essay argues that Miller’s proposed teleology is suspicious, not as innovative as he seems to think, and maybe even a retrogression. Finally, the essay faults Miller’s undertheorized conception of religion.

Hearing Hindu Stories

Abstract This article presses on some of the key insights from Mack’s seminal essay on Christianity vis-à-vis scholarship on a different religion, namely Hinduism. I suggest some extensions of Mack’s argument to the academic study of Hindu traditions, such as identifying the harms posed by the soft inclusion of Christian theology within the discipline of Religious Studies. I argue that this is a structural problem in the modern academy that sidelines scholars of non-Christian, especially non-Abrahamic, religions and creates a model for uncritical influence from ideological and political sources. Following on Mack’s analysis of the pressures of Christian theology, I identify specific non-academic threats to critical studies of Hinduism, namely the political commitments of Hindu nationalists and the embrace of orientalist ideas by scholars and practitioners. I argue it is imperative to counter both harmful trends, while recognizing significant challenges to doing so. I also draw on insights from scholarship on Hinduism to point to strategies potentially beneficial to scholars of Christianity keen to pursue Mack’s ideas, such as a milder interest in questions of origins that embraces multiplicity. I conclude that scholars of Hinduism are ready to tell our stories – based on critical analyses of a diverse and complicated religious tradition – but whether our academic peers in Religious Studies are ready to hear and incorporate our insights is another matter.

Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream by Tony Tian-Ren Lin

Reviewed by: Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream by Tony Tian-Ren Lin Justin Michael Doran Tony Tian-Ren Lin, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020) The intersection of immigration, economic life, and charismatic Christianity has never felt so vital to understanding America as it does in the wake of 2020. Political coalitions have been reforged by the powerful popular response to these issues and these communities. And yet scholars and journalists have worked with a paucity of serious inquiries into the communities at the center of this whirlwind: Latin American immigrants to the United States whose Christian devotion has come to mediate the fraught promises of economic prosperity. Tony Tian-Ren Lin's book, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream, provides this much-needed detail. The study includes deep, qualitative research into three Spanish-speaking congregations in Virginia, California, and New York, bringing them into a single analysis of, as Lin calls them, "Prosperity Gospel Latinos." The reverend Lin immigrated from Argentina and received his doctorate in the sociology of religion, making his insight into these communities both methodologically rigorous and sensitive to the faith of his subjects. The idea that drives Lin's analysis is that "Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal" theology enables Latinos in the United States to experience the meaningful arc of the American Dream despite confronting the serious barriers to realizing it in their lives. Or as Lin puts it, "it keeps [End Page 119] the American dream alive, even when everything around them feels like an American myth or even nightmare" (17). The book is part of the new Where Religion Lives series by University of North Carolina Press, which has the stated goal of publishing accessibly written ethnographies from the discipline of religious studies. It is easy to see why Lin's book was published in the series, as it is exceptionally clear in both prose and argumentation. The book proceeds thematically around the animating, titular argument. It begins with an outline of the three churches and the communities cultivated by their prosperity practices. It then decodes the theological logic operating within these churches, especially those beliefs particular to the prosperity gospel. The following chapter explains how church members come to convert to this Christian devotion, and the final chapter describes the social (particularly the familial) structure that emerges from this devotion. In addition to being well-organized as an ethnography, Lin consistently roots his analysis in human stories that remind the reader that these religious structures are inhabited by real people living complex lives. The second and third chapters of the work (on theology and conversion) are both good candidates for assigning to students, as they would allow real conversation about the meaning this movement has in American society. As an ethnographic study, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and their American Dream is thoroughly humane. That is, Tony Lin treats his subjects compassionately and writes about them seriously. As the most indispensable element of any systematic study of a community, we should regard this work as a success. As a work of scholarship, the book succumbs to several pitfalls of ethnographic studies. Qualitative studies in the sociology of religion occasionally neglect rigorous historical background on the movements that appear in the context of their research, and that is the case here. There is only a cursory historical introduction to the Pentecostal movement that leans toward the synthesizing overviews of Harvey Cox and away from the detailed work of scholars such as Grant Wacker or Cecil Robeck. There are essential gestures to the most important scholars of Latino Pentecostalism—Gastón Espinosa, Daniel Ramirez, Arlene Sánchez-Walsh—but no extended engagement with the questions posed by those scholars. Instead, this is a book engaged with a narrower subset of scholarship within the sociology of religion. Lin's choice of conversation partners has clearly shaped the study—an informant given the pseudonym Gerardo seems like a nod to Gerardo Martí, whose influence is apparent in both the general feel of this study and a back cover blurb. Martí is the author of lucid qualitative studies of multiethnic churches as seen, for example, in A Mosaic of...

Material in text, text in material: a tamil christian lullaby

In this article, I present a material-centered analysis of a Tamil Christian song titled Tiruchabai Tarattu, which was composed in 1813 by Vedanayaka Sastriar. Through this focused case study, I address the question of what is—or what ought to be—the relationship between material and textual analysis in the discipline of religious studies. Rather than positioning material religion as a discrete approach to the study of religion, one that is often contrasted with textual studies, I propose that textual studies finds in material religion an invitation for significant growth since texts are mediated through the material. I am especially interested in sensory experiences and objects, the mainstays of material analysis, as they are found embedded in texts. By focusing on the sensuous and material elements highlighted by the poet, a study otherwise focused within the bounds of textual sources can pivot and expand to include non-textual sources. My assembly, description, and analysis of sources and experiences that span across media in and outside of texts allows me to build what I call a sensory corpus by which we understand the meaning—better, meanings—of South Asian Christianity.

People Doing Things: Residual Subject Realism in the Study of Religion

Abstract This article considers a common theoretical mood within the discipline of religious studies, one that is skeptical about the reality of religion but confident about the reality of people doing things. Analyzing this mood within the context of recent discussions surrounding realism, I argue that this mix of anti-realism with respect to religion and realism with respect to people doing things testifies to the lingering effects of a subject philosophy. Such residual subject-philosophical realism in turn suggests the uneven reception of structure philosophy, a way of thinking that rules out straightforward reference to the reality not only of religion but of people doing things as well. A more faithful reception of structure-philosophical insights suggests opportunities for re-theorizing the reality of religion.

Theology and Genealogies of Religious Studies

AbstractIn its relatively short life, the discipline of religious studies has issued several challenges to theology. The currency of genealogical strategies in the study of religion changes the nature of the disciplinary contest because these strategies challenge both disciplines to account for their normative dimensions. In this article, I show how different scholars and theologians typically negotiate the relationship between theology and genealogies of religion by closing off historicist inquiries in directions that either reduce or preserve the analytic value of the discourses of religion. These two options (either/or) cross disciplinary boundaries and relativize matters of belief and unbelief. Drawing on Robert Orsi’s work, I argue for a third option, which opens the study of religion and theology to competing presences, and distinguishes, as Bruno Latour does, the procedures of multiplying networks of actors from composing a common world. This third option suggests a freer, more collaborative vision of academic life.

Introduction

AbstractAlthough studies on the entwining of religious and economic forms in the discipline of religious studies have typically centered on Euro-American contexts, this roundtable offers multiple points of departure for analyzing religion and economy in four national contexts outside the West. Debates about the relationships between morality, sacred histories, market governance, and financial cultures have different terms and stakes outside of Western concentrations of capital. The ideologies of freedom and personal autonomy that underpin neoliberalism are inflected quite differently in contexts and intellectual traditions with both colonial and socialist histories. This is true not only for trenchant critics of neoliberalism but also for those actors who provocatively assert freedom through the market. By de-centering the West as the starting point for understanding neoliberal capitalism, we are better able to see the ways that colonial and imperial power is experienced across the globe and how it bears out in diverse neoliberal cultural formations.

Religious Studies and Internal Family Systems Therapy

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychotherapy modality that combines elements of systems theory with an experiential approach that rests on distinctions between Self and parts of self. Unlike more cognitive approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic ‘talk’ therapies, IFS challenges traditional divisions between mind and body that have endured in both the treatment of psychological trauma and in the study of religion. This essay provides a summary of IFS as it is conceptualized by Richard Schwartz, Martha Sweezy, and Frank Anderson, and then critically identifies several significant religious resonances in its approach to mediating between a stable ‘Self ’ and parts of self that are partitioned by traumatic or overwhelming experiences. I conclude with the suggestion that the IFS approach to therapy and the discipline of Religious Studies mutually illuminate and challenge each other in their overlapping approaches to the problems of value-neutrality and normativity.

A Sufi Master without a Hospice

This article examines the conceptions of Sufism and mysticism by the influential Iranian intellectual, Abdolkarim Soroush (b.1945). It situates the academic and intellectual products of Soroush in the context of Islamic modernism to study him within the discipline of religious studies in general, and Islamic studies in particular. It traces the evolution of his attitude through two relatively distinct and concurrently interconnected periods of his intellectual development. We argue that the concept of ‘Sufism’ emerged in his thought in the late 1980s as an ideal type that allowed Soroush to pursue multi-layered projects. These projects include a liberal Islam where the privatisation of religion through mysticism plays a key role, and a mild nationalist project where the concept of ‘mysticism’ is universalised in order to imagine an Iranian community that is in conversation with mysticisms of other religious traditions. We also observe that his reading of Sufism suffers from a chronic essentialism, which is exercised through ideal types. His understanding of mysticism also follows a version of experientialism in its early twentieth-century Jamesian fashion. Accordingly, the politicised demarcations of mysticism in his intellectual project are crystallised.

Not Seeing Snow: Musō Soseki and Medieval Japanese Zen by Molly Vallor

Reviewed by: Not Seeing Snow: Musō Soseki and Medieval Japanese Zen by Molly Vallor Yukio Lippit (bio) Not Seeing Snow: Musō Soseki and Medieval Japanese Zen. By Molly Vallor. Brill, Leiden, 2019. xiv, 264 pages. $119.00, cloth; $25.00, E-book. As Molly Vallor writes in the introduction to her new book, the Zen monk Musō Soseki (1275–1351) "has been largely overlooked in the modern era" (p. xi) and continues to be "shrouded in mystery" (p. vii). This despite the fact that he was, at least in institutional terms, perhaps the most influential figure in the history of medieval Japanese Zen, whose disciples would go on to play key roles in shaping Gozan monasteries and Ashikaga politics, while developing standards for cultural forms such as Gozan poetry and poem-picture scrolls (shigajiku). This neglect is the result of Musō's "tarnished reputation" as an overly political figure who has been unappealing to scholars seeking "pure Zen" (p. xi), as well as the manner in which his reputation as the designer of Saihōji garden has obscured other aspects of his life and cultural production. Vallor's book is thus highly welcome. In "[reconsidering] this noteworthy figure and his representative works apart from these longstanding biases" (p. x), it illuminates not only Musō's texts and historical circumstances but also a great deal about Zen and politics in fourteenth-century Japan. The scholarly study of Musō is no easy task. His life spanned a complex historical era that witnessed political upheaval and the rapid evolution of Zen institutions. Musō constantly moved back and forth between regions and mediated distinct spheres of influence, whether they be monastic, imperial, or shogunal. Even among the Ashikaga, Musō served as a go-between for the [End Page 127] conflicted brothers Takauji and Tadayoshi. The sources that survive to document his doings are anything but straightforward; his biographical chronology (nenpu) and numerous other texts were favorably redacted by followers such as his nephew and closest disciple Shun'oku Myōha (1311–88). Vallor is attentive to the heavy editorial bias in these sources. Just as importantly, her training as a literary scholar enables her to carefully parse his literary works, most notably his widely read kana sermon Muchū mondōshū (Dialogues in a dream, 1342) as well as his personal waka anthology Shōgaku kokushishū (Anthology of poems by National Master Shōgaku), in order to paint a fuller picture of Musō's patterns of discursive thought, self-fashioning, and engagement with patrons. The result is a highly interdisciplinary approach that "borrows from the disciplines of religious studies, literary studies, art history, and history" in order to "clarify [Musō's] wide-ranging influence on different areas of medieval culture" (p. x). The introductory chapter provides a succinct overview of Musō's life as gleaned from his biographical chronology. It follows his upbringing in Ise as a distant imperial descendant and initial training in esoteric Buddhism, through his taking of precepts at Tōdaiji; his early Zen apprenticeship at Kenninji and then in Kamakura under Yishan Yining and eventually Kōhō Kennichi, who would formally become Musō's master; his various peregrinations and stays in northeastern Japan at Unganji temple as well as small hermitages and temples in Kai and Mino Provinces; his acceptance to serve as abbot of Nanzenji upon Emperor Godaigo's invitation; his association with the Ashikaga and the Northern Court; his oversight of the bakufu project to build or designate a state temple (ankokuji) and stupa (rishōtō) in each province; and the founding of Tenryūji in Kyoto before his own death in 1351. As those who have researched the lives of Zen monks know well, such chronologies, often included in the recorded sayings (goroku) of a given monk, can be laconic and difficult to bring to life, but the author does an exemplary job of reading between the lines to essentially convey two narratives, one centered on the circumstances of Musō's life, the other on the ways in which entries were strategically shaped to elevate the partisan claims of his succession lineage. A good example concerns the account of Musō's unsuccessful encounter with Yishan Yining, which the...

Measuring Student Learning Approaches and Generic Skills: A Multi-Group Analysis of Gender Differences

The present study sought to measure student learning approaches and generic skills and to determine the influence of learning approaches on the undergraduates’ generic skills. By utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM), the study aimed to identify if there are any gender differences in the relations. The study adapted the Revised Approaches to Studying (RASI) (Duff, 1997) in order to measure the learning approaches and the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) (Wilson & Lizzio, 1997) to tap into the students’ generic skills. A total of 233 undergraduates from various religious studies disciplines took part in the survey. The study utilized purposive sampling in the data collection in which only final year students were sampled. Using multi-group analysis via SEM, the data showed that the models for boys and girls differed in which the girls’ surface approach negatively influenced their generic skills. Unlike the girls, the boys’ strategic and surface approaches are related to generic skills, each having a positive and negative relationship respectively. Interestingly, the boys’ model also accounted for a higher explained variance (47%) compared to that of the girls’ (23%). A model of the relationship between the learning approaches and generic skills used was subsequently proposed. The study uncovered how the boys’ and girls’ learning approaches may influence the teaching and learning in the classroom and on students’ generic skills, subsequently graduate employability. A number of suggestions have been forwarded so as to escalate the use of generics skills among the students of various religious studies disciplines and those of girls in particular.

Reconfiguring the Boundaries of American Religious Studies

American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020), pp. 10–13 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.1.03 Reconfiguring the Boundaries of American Religious Studies Abtsam Saleh Harvard University, Cambridge, USA Why is American Islam is so Rarely Framed as an “American Religion” in the Field of Religious Studies? Despite existing in America long before the establishment of the United States, Muslims have been largely left out of discussions on American religion within the field of religious studies. In order to answer the question of why, one has to ask what scholars of religious studies have understood “American religion” to be. According to most surveys of American religious history, the term has been used to denote the history of Christianity in America, white Protestantism more specifically, some dating the origins of American religion back to the Protestant Reformation.1 Narratives surrounding American religion were constructed to center Protestantism and the ways it has dominated public religious life in the United States, reified by legal and political actors.2 Considerations of what fell under the category of American religion were largely based on proximity to mainline Protestant churches, casting all other denominations and/or religions outside of the category. Over time, however, 1 For more recent work on this topic see John Modern, “Marshall McLuhan, Playful Prophet” in “Forum: The Religious Situation, 1968 (Part 2),” Religion and American Culture 29, no. 2 (2019): 153–162. 2 See Marie A. Failinger, “Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800 to 1960,” Boston College Journal of Law and Social Justice 32, no.1 (2012): 1–29. Abtsam Saleh 11 historians of American religion have begun to expand on this narrow definition. R. Laurence Moore’s Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans,3 although working with this mainline definition of American religion, expands on the category by examining its relationship with denominations and/or religions deemed as religious outsiders on the basis of dissenting from mainline Protestantism. Moore concludes that this categorization based on consensus-dissent is inadequate in expressing the plurality of American religious life in-so-much as it continues to center mainline Christianity as the religion of the US as a nation. In the more recent “The Study of American Religions: Critical Reflections on a Specialization,” Finbarr Curtis critically examines the category of American religion as a specialization within the discipline of religious studies, including its history of Protestant bias. Curtis highlights how despite attempts at expanding American religion to include narratives of underrepresented religious groups, these inclusions remain peripheral despite being recognized.4 This precise centering of Protestantism as the American religion and the locating of those not in proximity to it in its periphery is a reason why American Islam is so rarely framed as an “American religion” in the field of religious studies. Narratives of American religious history place American Islam in the periphery, dismissing its influence on American culture and American culture ’s influence on it. American religionists reify this categorization both in their scholarship and institutionally when American Islam is positioned as peripheral to the construction of the American nation and religion. Can Islam be “American religion”? If we move away from an understanding of American religion that centers white Protestantism and expand the category to mean religions who have both shaped and been shaped by this nation, whose understandings are put in conversation with the legal, social, political, economic, and cultural life of the United States, then Islam is certainly an American religion. American Muslims are part of the patchwork of American social-religious life, preceding the formation of the United States. Enslaved African Muslims were brought to the Americas centuries prior to the American Revolution, bringing with them their religious traditions, many maintaining them in conversation with their new surroundings, and some preserving them over generations.5 Over centuries, Islam lived and grew within 3 R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 4 Finbarr Curtis, “The Study of American Religions: Critical Reflections on a Specialization ,” Religion 42, no. 3 (2012): 365. 5 See Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, (New York: New...

From the Editors

Montreal, December 2019 Dear Readers: The Council for Research on Religion (CREOR) is pleased to announce the first edition of its E-Journal, The Journal of the Council for Research on Religion. This first issue deals with the theme of “Religion and Violence,” a SSHRC funded colloquium that took place on April 17th - 20th, 2018. The colloquium was a collaboration between members of McGill and Concordia University, further details concerning the colloquium can be found on the following site: https://creorgraduate.wordpress.com/religion-and-violence-colloquium/CREOR is Montreal's first academic research council in the field of Religious Studies. The Council is an inter-disciplinary and inter-university entity drawing on the expertise and research interests present in the city of Montreal. It consists of members from the disciplines of Religious Studies and other disciplines within Arts, as well as from Education, Law and Medicine, and other disciplines, such as Management and Music. CREOR is based in Montreal and collaborates with researchers from Montreal based universities and colleges and from around the world. Editorial Team for the Religion and Violence Vol. 1Chief Editors: Dr. Gerbern S. Oegema Dr. André Gagné Graduate Student Editors: Amanda Rosini Elyse MacLeod David Anthony Basham

Teaching in contexts: Designing a competency‐based religious studies program

AbstractOver the last decade, the discipline of religious studies has promoted religious literacy as both an invaluable contribution to curriculum and an indispensable social good. While much has been written on the importance of the study of religion for the development of religious literacy, little attention has been given to the identification of the disciplinary skills and content knowledge (or what we refer to as religious studies competencies) a student develops through extended study of religion. In this essay, we present an example of how to integrate a religious studies competency‐based model into program design and implementation. We argue that the transition to a competency‐based religious studies program has two potential benefits. First, competency program design provides an opportunity to redesign and update religious studies programs in a more responsible manner that aligns with our students, institution, discipline, and profession. Second, competency program design facilitates the conditions where we can better avoid duplicating the much criticized world religions paradigm.

Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace

Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace

Feminist Methodologies

Abstract Given changing contexts and social discourses, it is theoretically enriching to enlarge the research emphasis of the secular academic discipline of Religious Studies to consider ways in which women who self-identify as religious contribute to their various traditions in ways that deepen spiritual experience for the communities as a whole and make contributions to their larger social contexts. Religious Studies scholars value scientific approaches but also, to be respectful of the communities studied, must recognize that they do a disservice to those communities if they reduce findings to the confines of these approaches. Interdisciplinary work that draws on methodological concepts developed in feminist theological thought, together with naturalist approaches, serves to increase knowledge about and by women in faith communities. By continuing to develop theology in rigorous and thoughtful ways, modern women are carrying forward an important interpretive tradition that strengthens analyses of religion in the secular humanities and social sciences.

Categorization, Collection, and the Construction of Continuity: 1 Enoch and 3 Enoch in and beyond “Apocalypticism” and “Mysticism”

Recent decades have seen an intensive reassessment of older scholarly categories within the discipline of Religious Studies, spurring a turn toward more microhistorical approaches in the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity in particular. With an eye to the power and limits of scholarly practices of categorization, this article reflects upon the pairing of “Apocalypticism” and “Mysticism” in modern scholarship on premodern Judaism, focusing on two works commonly cited as exemplary of their connection—1 Enochand3 Enoch. Drawing insights from interdisciplinary research on the History of the Book/Material Texts, it experiments with situating scholarly acts of categorization in relation to other practices of constructing continuity, both ancient and modern. It highlights the potency of anthologies and related textual practices for naturalizing certain categories of comparison and certain trajectories of retrospective connection—for modern scholars no less than for ancient and medieval readers.

Feasts of the Anthropocene: Beyond Climate Change as Special Object in the Study of Religion

The discipline of religious studies often misses how climate change drives shifts across its domains of interpretation by treating it as a special object. This essay depicts how cultural stress from anthropogenic changes in planetary systems may be illuminated through what cultures and movements are doing with food and argues that it makes sense to interpret some of those gastronomic functions with religious analyses. Insofar as food movements attempt to reckon with changing relations of a postnatural world, or cultivate formations of identity and agency from which to make meaning from those relations, they implicitly display how climate can influence dimensions of life often approached through the study of religion.