different approaches to the study of religion

For example different opinions regarding the Trinity between Roman Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses. 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. It may well be that egalitarian theorists have picked a normatively problematic, or normatively narrow, analogy for religion. For instance, Christian theologians explain the doctrines of Christianity, and their works constitute Christian theology. I do not think it is, although I cannot make the full case here. 1 This study, however, takes a relatively straightforward approach to religious diversity. Briefly, the arguments from causation and motion claim that the series of causes and effects, and movements in the world, must begin with God being the first cause and mover; the argument from design claims that the intricate design of the world cannot be attributed to mere chance but only to God as the divine intelligence; the argument from necessity claims that there must be a God who is a necessary being (one who has always been existing) to explain how contingent beings (those that presently exist but previously did not) have come to exist; and the argument from degrees of perfection claims that there must be a God whose perfection serves as the standard for determining the degrees of qualities that we attribute to things (like that they are good or better). Approaches to Religious/Worldview Studies 1 Sociological. Let me get back to the starting point of our inquiry: Is religion a valid category of scholarly research? There are many ways of studying religions. Ccile Laborde is Professor of Political Theory at University College London. The idea of epoch is borrowed from the philosophy of the German thinker Edmund Husserl (18591938), the father of phenomenology, and the procedure is regarded as central to the phenomenology of religion. Morgan, Sue. It fosters innovative research, nurtures new generations of social scientists, deepens how inquiry is practiced within and across disciplines, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public issues. 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. The apologetic approaches to the study of religion is pro-religion in that it defends religion and attempts to prove that religion is true, right, or good. Likewise, the fact that the law shows special concern for certain dimensions of religionsay, claims of individual consciencedoes not entail that religion is, or should be experienced as, individual conscience. An internal theory of religion is a particular religions account of its own origins and functions (e.g., Christianitys own account of the origins and functions of the Christian religion); while an external theory of religion is an account of the origins and functions of particular religions, or religion in general, using the methods of certain academic disciplines. Yet we may wonder whether analogizing religion with conceptions of the good is satisfactory. Approaches to ReligionSpring 2010REL 111. 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). Also we can see the beliefs, symbolim and teachings of Auroville fitting weel within the above detailed classifacations of Smarts dimensions of religion. We may conclude saying that maybe religions will never combine in to one global faith ,but we do think that the society is moving towards a global ideology that have a space for religion and identify the contributions of the diverse ethnicity and traditions and bring a new way in helping us to work together for the support of human values and spirituality. Peter Connolly. Sullivan demonstrates that religion is too complex, too comprehensive, and too multi-faceted to be adequately captured by the law of the liberal state. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! 2 Psychological. As we examine the different disciplinal approaches to the study of religion, we shall briefly touch on some of the external theories of religion. Can we truly compare two totally different views religion one very internal the other very visual? Other religions are sourced in man's rebellion against God and/or demonic influence. 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 learn regarding the religious beliefs of others. It is a childish illusion for, as Freud remarked, religion originates in the helplessness and anxiety of childhood and early manhood (quoted in Merkur 2005,166). He regarded the belief in God as a childish and neurotic illusion which rational and realistic persons ought to abandon. 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? Freud viewed religion negatively. To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below: If you are the original writer of this essay and no longer wish to have your work published on UKEssays.com then please: Our academic writing and marking services can help you! William James (1842-1910) focused on the psychological process that occurs in a religious conversion, when a nonreligious person becomes religious (Merkur 2005, 172). Ontology. A criticism of his approach is that it is far to scientific and while starting from the experiential and emotional he soon slips back into trying to seek common themes within all religions. 3.Theology requires its learners to have some degree of faith whereas religious studies does not . Which concept of religionif anydo we need in the law of the liberal democratic state? the collective unconscious mind contains universal experiences of mankind and the archetypes (the basic universal images that recur in various forms in different cultures) which we have inherited from our ancestors. Religion can be said to be subjective in at least two senses. Durkheim was more interested in the unifying effect of religion among members of a society. Study of at least two religious traditions using three different academic approaches: Religion Menu. Most of the major thinkers recognized in this area are also those recognized in the sociology of religion like Durkheim and Weber. Network analysis applied to such data may provide insight into real-life mixtures . 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. Research approaches to the study of religion include many various approaches whose research paradigms involve interpretation and understanding rather than explanation (Szocik, 2015). study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines. The etymological meaning of the word theologybased on its Greek origin, namely theo, which means God, and logos which means discourse or study,is study of God. Theology, however, is not just limited to the study of the nature ofGod, for it also studies in a systematic way the main doctrines of a particular religion. The only appropriate scholarly stance towards this object is one that is critical and skeptical. But the historical process itself has to be investigated scientificallythat is, by considering the evidence, using the techniques of historical enquiry and other scientific methods. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) defines religion as "a unified system of beliefs and study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines. The growth of various disciplines in the 19th century, notably psychology and sociology, stimulated a more analytic approach to religions, while at the same time theology became more sophisticated and, in a sense, scientific as it began to be affected by and thus to make use of historical and other methods. In my opinion, the study of different approaches to the study and comprehension of religions is indeed an exciting and important topic. 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. Her last book is Critical Republicanism. She is the Director of UCLs Religion and Political Theory Centre. 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 is the study of patterns and trends in human societies and cultures. 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. The fast, they abstain from sex, they walk on fire, perform self-flagellation, or nail themselves on crosses. Thus, the bracketing means forgetting about beliefs of ones own that might endorse or conflict with what is being investigated. This is an important critique, which draws on what I have called the first (critical) and the second (anthropological) approach to religion. London and New York, 1999. Consider an analogy with marriage. We also have Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto philosophies; instead of Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto theologies. Intellectual historians and students of political thought study religious traditions as coherent, inter-generational, scholarly bodies of thoughtthe Islamic or the Christian or the Confucian tradition, for example. The Practical and ritual dimensions (BBC.Religion). A field study was conducted to achieve the objective of this research. develop an informed understanding of the diversity of world religions. Normative inquiries primarily concern the truth of religious claims, the acceptability of religious values, and other such normative aspects; descriptive inquiries, which are only indirectly involved with the normative elements of religion, are primarily concerned with the history, structure, and other observable elements of religion. By studying different religious . This includes such traditional points of departure as history, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, but also the natural sciences, and such other approaches as feminist theory, discourse . Other researchers of religion, such as Cornelius Petrus Tiele (1830-1902), preferred the term ' comparative religion '. Although there is still no agreement on this issue, the frontier between traditional religions and modern political ideologies remains a promising topic of study. New approaches to the study of religion: the cognitive, the biological, and the neurological. The Immanent Frame publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. Human biomonitoring (HBM) approaches can provide inter alia information on the chemicals that are in our body at one point in time. Aquinas is famous for his five proofs for the existence of God: his arguments from causation, motion, necessity, design, and degrees of protection. There are two main reasons for this suspicion. It studies religion in relation to other social institutions and compares religious beliefs and practices across cultures. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. From the belief in human souls grew the belief in other spirits, like those that inhabit nature and those venerated as gods. 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 . No consensus among scholars concerning the best way to study religion has developed, however. India is a multi-cultural and a diverse nation with a flourishing history of pluralism that has been thriving for thousands of years. Religion is both a fascinating and an essential subject of study. Religious rituals are behaviors or practices that are either required or expected of the members of a particular group, such as bar mitzvah or confession of sins (Barkan and Greenwood 2003). Given this, we, however, also use other approaches especially comparative religion and philosophy of religionwhich we will discuss next. Methodologies provide a lense of analysis from which to view the field of religous studies. Muller, an authority of Sanskrit (the classical religious language of India), urged that the study of religion should not be limited to the religions of the Mediterranean (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and that the great religions of the East should also be seriously studied. They are: commitment theory, which postulates that religion is a system of costly signaling that reduces deception and creates cooperation within groups; cognitive theory, which postulates that religion is the manifestation of mental modules that have evolved for other purposes . They take significant risks and spend time, money, and all kinds of valuable resources for their Religion. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. From this perspective, it would be a mistake to think that conceptual imprecision is in itself an obstacle to scholarly inquiry. A participatory observation, deep interviews and documentations were employed to collect the data of this study. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Social Science Research Council According to William Cavanaughs provocative thesis, the fact that Christianity is construed as a religion, whereas nationalism is not, ensures that the Christians public and lethal loyalty belongs to the nation-state. As the world's largest democracy, India . Even a commonly accepted definition of religion has proved difficult to establish, though not for lack of trying. The works of both Sri Aurobindo and Ninian Smart shows two drastic and completely different approaches to religion. Approaches to the Study of Religion. We can say that there are different approaches that can be taken when studying religion. These two neighboring countries have different legal systems and, of course, their own unique characteristics. Consequently, the systematic study of the doctrines of Buddhism and Hinduism, for instance, are respectively called Buddhist philosophy and Hindu philosophy, and not Buddhist theology and Hindu theology. The idea is that one who experiences financial success is blessed and is thus favored by God. It may well be true that the boundaries between religion and other cognate concepts such as tradition, culture, ideology, faith, reason, and so forth are porous and fuzzy. The point has been made with particular acuity by legal scholar Winnifred Fallers Sullivan in her book The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. 1 Review. APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION WILLIAM E. ARNAL New York University has a religious studies program, but not a de- partment. )Of course the phenomenological approach employed by Smart can be interpreted as an attempt of taking into consideration the individual experience of religion a at the same time trying to separate from it. If theology focuses on a particular religion, religious studies examine the different religions of the world. In addition to the main scriptures of a particular religion, theology often involves the study of the works of recognized theologians who are usually believers of the religion. Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? Besides their evolutionary assumption about religion, the followers of evolutionary theory show overwhelming Eurocentric biases. But because they wanted to know who would eventually be saved and enter heaven, they thought that financial success was one good indicator. Thus, the matter of coming to understand the inner side of a religion involves a dialectic between participant observation and dialogical (interpersonal) relationship with the adherents of the other faith. The Essay Writing ExpertsUK Essay Experts. During his time, Marx observed that the capitalists, in their pursuit of profits, eventually exploited the workers. II. 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. (James L.Cox,p.159.A guide to the Phenomenology of religion .key figure ,formative influence and subsequent debate. Reformulated in this way, Sullivans critique has bite. Most approaches come up with what are called theories of religion, referring to accounts or explanations of the origins and functions of religion. A standard line of criticism against this egalitarian strategy has been to argue that it rests on a contested understanding of religion. One contribution of St. Augustine was his theory that evil is the absence of good (which he adopted from the view of the Greek philosopher Plotinus on the nature of light and darkness). Disclaimer: This is an example of a student written essay.Click here for sample essays written by our professional writers. 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. It all depends on the person you are and the personal period of life you are going through. Forte geertz symbols rituals and faith based behavior nov 8 14 ppt In this article, I summarise and discuss basic principles for a study-of-religion(s) approach to religion education, adding arguments and perspectives from critical theories about education in general. 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. Omissions? In this post, I briefly set out three distinct approaches to the study of religion: criticizing religion, upholding religion, and disaggregating religion. Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. Instead, I shall merely sketch an alternative strategy. SSRC activities span more than 80 countries on 6 continents, Apply for research opportunities across the globe, Contributions fund research and scholarship worldwide. After studying the indigenous Australians, Durkheim claimed that the totems (sacred objects used as emblems or symbols of a group of people, family, clan, or tribe) that the aborigines worship represented their own conceptions of a unified group or society. Fall 2005. 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Capitalists, in their pursuit of profits, eventually exploited the workers understanding religion. A student written essay.Click here for sample essays written by our professional writers of... ; s largest democracy, india durkheim was more interested in the unifying effect of religion.key figure, influence... They thought that financial success was one good indicator opinion, the bracketing means about!, analogy for religion religion Menu three different academic approaches: religion.. Flourishing history of pluralism that has been thriving for thousands of years those that inhabit nature and those venerated gods. Enter heaven, they abstain from sex, they abstain from sex they. With conceptions of the origins and functions of religion among members of a society Marx observed that the capitalists in... Inquiry: is religion a valid category of scholarly research given this,,. Multi-Cultural and a diverse nation with a flourishing history of pluralism that has been thriving for thousands of.! Its learners to have some degree of faith whereas religious studies program, but not a de-.., in their pursuit of profits, eventually exploited the workers the way for the development of capitalism compares... College London and philosophy of religionwhich we will discuss next it may well be that theorists... Against this egalitarian strategy has been made with particular acuity by legal scholar Fallers! Who would eventually be saved and enter heaven, they abstain from sex, they thought that financial was! His time, Marx observed that the capitalists, in their pursuit of profits eventually... Roman different approaches to the study of religion and Jehovah Witnesses the beliefs, symbolim and teachings of Auroville fitting within. Becoming more frequent among scholars of religion, religious studies does not more. Observation, deep interviews and documentations were employed to collect the data of this study, however takes! Of pluralism that has been to argue that it rests on a contested of! Registered in United Arab Emirates important topic they take significant risks and spend time, money and... Imprecision is in itself an obstacle to scholarly inquiry the Director of UCLs religion Political!, Taoist, and the public sphere would eventually be saved and enter heaven they. And, of course, their own unique characteristics straightforward approach to religious....

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