Critics Not Caretakers

Author : RUSSELL T. MCCUTCHEON
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9781032467924
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critics Not Caretakers written by RUSSELL T. MCCUTCHEON and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2023-11-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays argues that the study of religion must be rethought as an ordinary aspect of social, historical existence, a stance that makes the scholar of religion a critic of cultural and historical practices rather than a caretaker of religious tradition or a font of timeless wisdom and deep meaning.

Author : Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 100099676X
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critics Not Caretakers written by Russell T. McCutcheon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected together in Critics Not Caretakers argue that the study of religion must be rethought as an ordinary aspect of social, historical existence, a stance that makes the scholar of religion a critic of cultural and historical practices rather than a caretaker of religious tradition or a font of timeless wisdom and deep meaning. The book begins with several essays that outline the basis of an alternative, sociorhetorical approach to studying religion, before moving on to a series of discrete dispatches from the ongoing theory wars, each of which uses the work of such writers as Karen Armstrong, Walter Burkert, Benson Saler, and Jacob Neusner as a point of entry into wider theoretical issues of importance to the field’s future. The author then examines the socio-political role of this brand of critical scholarship—a role that differs dramatically from the type of sympathetic caretaking generally associated with scholars of religion who feel compelled to “go public.” Concluding the work is a consideration of how scholars as teachers can address issues of theory, method, and critical thinking in a variety of undergraduate classrooms—the location where they have always been publicly accountable intellectuals. The new edition of this still read and, for some, controversial book preserves the original essays but includes a new opening chapter and new introductory commentaries across all of the chapters to demonstrate how little the field has changed since the volume was first published in 2001. Accordingly, the book continues to provide a viable alternative for those wanting to take a more critical approach to the study of religion.

Author : Andrew Dole
Publisher : AAR: Religion, Culture & Histo
ISBN 13 : 0195341171
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order written by Andrew Dole and published by AAR: Religion, Culture & Histo. This book was released on 2010 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is best known as the 'father of liberal Protestant theology,' largely on the strength of his massive work of systematic theology, 'The Christian Faith'. Here, Dole presents a new account of Schleiermacher's theory of religion.

Author : Richard B. Miller
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197566812
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Study Religion? written by Richard B. Miller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book asks: Can the study of religion be justified? It poses this question on the view that scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of methodological procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that can justify the study of religion and motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, it insists, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. The book identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, each of which it critically examines as symptomatic of this crisis, on the way toward offering an alternative framework for thinking about purposes for studying religion. Shadowing these methodologies is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that privileges value-neutrality. This ideal poses obstacles to making justificatory claims on behalf of studying religion and fortifies a repressive conscience about thinking normatively within the field's regime of truth. After making these points, the chapter describes the book's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, especially how it theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship and offers a basis for thinking about the ethics of Religious Studies as held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, the book argues, the study of religion can imagine itself as a valuable and desirable enterprise so that scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and avow the values of studying religion"--

Author : Brian K. Pennington
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195166558
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Was Hinduism Invented? written by Brian K. Pennington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pennington retells the story of Christian's and Hindu's reception of each other in early 19th century Bengal, giving prominence to the power of the respective worldviews to shape the encounter and to help produce the very religions that colonialism thought it 'discovered'.

Author : Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134477996
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Discipline of Religion written by Russell T. McCutcheon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-08 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Discipline of Religion is a lively critical journey through religious studies today, looking at its recent growth as an academic discipline, and its contemporary political and social meanings. Focusing on the differences between religious belief and academic religious discourse, Russell T. McCutcheon argues that the invention of religion as a discipline blurs the distinction between criticism and doctrine in its assertion of the relevance of faith as a credible object of study. In the leap from disciplinary criticism to avowal of actual cosmic and moral meaning, schools of religious studies extend their powers far beyond universities and into the everyday lives of those outside, managing and curtailing specific types of speech and dissent.

Author : Paul A. Macdonald, Jr.
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317166620
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Theology and the Secular University written by Paul A. Macdonald, Jr. and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-24 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the secular university by definition is non-sectarian or non-denominational, then how can it accommodate a discipline like Christian theology? Doesn’t the traditional goal of theological study, which is to attain knowledge of the divine, fundamentally conflict with the main goal of secular academic study, which is to attain knowledge about ourselves and the world in which we live? So why should theology be admitted, or even care about being admitted, into secular academic life? And even if theology were admitted, what contribution to secular academic life could it make? Working from a Christian philosophical and theological perspective but also engaging a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and religious studies scholars, Christian Theology and the Secular University takes on these questions, arguing that Christian theology does belong in the secular university because it provides distinct resources that the secular university needs if it is going to fulfill what should be its main epistemic and educative ends. This book offers a fresh and unique perspective to scholars working in the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and religious studies, and to those in other academic disciplines who are interested in thinking critically and creatively about the place and nature of theological study within the secular university.

Author : Monica R. Miller
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415628571
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and Hip Hop written by Monica R. Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title brings together the category of religion, hip hop cultural modalities and the demographic of youth. Bringing postmodern theory and critical approaches in the study of religion to bear on hip hop cultural practices, the book examines how scholars in have deployed and approached religion when analyzing hip hop data.

Author : Hans Gustafson
Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 : 1506486959
Total Pages : 550 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Everyday Wisdom written by Hans Gustafson and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade, interreligious and interfaith studies have flourished in religion and theology departments, emphasizing the value of religious literacy for professional, vocational, and civic leadership. Everyday Wisdom offers an accessible introduction with an emphasis on lived religion, interreligious studies, and interfaith engagement and leadership. Hans Gustafson first explores the study of religion and interreligious studies, including the complexity and dynamism of religious identity, the global religious landscape, lived-religion approaches to the study of religion, and (inter)religious literacy. He then examines the relationship between the academic field of interreligious studies and the civic project of interfaith engagement. Focusing on interreligious studies, he explores various responses to religious diversity, while welcoming the role of secular and pluralist forces in religiously diverse societies. Gustafson introduces the dominant theological modes of approach to other religious traditions and to interreligious theological encounter, and examines the vital experience of human relationship across religious difference for inter- and intra-personal and purpose development, changemaking, and leadership. By holistically tying together several of the ultimate aims and common learning objectives of interreligious-studies courses, Gustafson proposes a framework, based on practical wisdom, for interreligious studies and interfaith leadership. Everyday Wisdom aims to be a core text in undergraduate and graduate courses in the fast-emerging field of interreligious and interfaith studies, as well as for the wider context of the study of religion and leadership.

Author : Theodore Vial
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190621966
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Modern Religion, Modern Race written by Theodore Vial and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is a racialized category, even when race is not explicitly mentioned. In Modern Religion, Modern Race Theodore Vial argues that because the categories of religion and race are rooted in the post-Enlightenment project of reimagining what it means to be human, we cannot simply will ourselves to stop using them. Only by acknowledging that religion is already racialized can we begin to understand how the two concepts are intertwined and how they operate in our modern world. It has become common to argue that the category religion is not universal, or even very old, but is a product of Europe's Enlightenment modernization. Equally common is the argument that religion is not an innocent category of analysis, but is implicated in colonial regimes of control and as such plays a role in Europe's process of identity construction of itself and of non-European "others." Current debates about race follow an eerily similar trajectory: race is not an ancient but a modern construction. It is part of the project of colonialism, and race discourse forms one of the cornerstones of modern European identity-making. Why can't we stop using them, or re-construct them in less toxic ways? By examining the theories of Kant, Herder, and Schleiermacher, among others, Vial uncovers co-constitutive nature of race and religion, describes how they became building blocks of the modern world, and shows how the two concepts continue to be used today to form identity and to make sense of the world. He shows that while we disdain the racist language of some of the founders of religious studies, the continued influence of the modern worldview they helped create leads us, often unwittingly, to reiterate many of the same distinctions and hierarchies. Although it may not be time to abandon the very category of religion, with all its attendant baggage, Modern Religion, Modern Race calls for us to examine that baggage critically, and to be fully conscious of the ways in which religion always carries with it dangerous ideas of race.