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Scientific study of religion
- Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is the scientific study of religion. There is no consensus on what qualifies as religion and its definition is highly contested. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing empirical, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_studies
Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is the scientific study of religion. There is no consensus on what qualifies as religion and its definition is highly contested. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing empirical, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
- Overview
- The essence of religion and the context of religious beliefs, practices, and institutions
- Neutrality and subjectivity in the study of religion
study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines.
The study of religion emerged as a formal discipline during the 19th century, when the methods and approaches of history, philology, literary criticism, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and other fields were brought to bear on the task of determining the history, origins, and functions of religion. No consensus among scholars concerning the best way to study religion has developed, however. One of the many reasons for this failure is that each discipline enlisted to study religion has its own distinctive methods and topics, and scholars often disagree about how to resolve the inevitable conflicts between these different intellectual perspectives. Another reason is that questions about the origins and functions of religion have often been conflated with questions about the truth of religion, and this has led to controversies that tend to hinder the development of common concepts, methodologies, and problems.
Even a commonly accepted definition of religion has proved difficult to establish, though not for lack of trying. Attempts have been made to find a distinctive ingredient in all religions, such as the numinous, or spiritual, experience, the contrast between the sacred and the profane, and the belief in one or more gods. But objections have been brought against all these attempts, either because the rich variety of religions makes it easy to find counterexamples or because the element cited as central is in some religions peripheral. The gods play a merely subsidiary role, for example, in most phases of Theravada (“Way of the Elders”) Buddhism. A more promising method would seem to be that of exhibiting aspects of religion that are typical of religions, though not necessarily universal, such as the occurrence of the rituals of worship. There are religions, however, in which even worship rituals are not central. Thus, the preliminary task of the student of religion must be to amass an inventory of kinds of religious phenomena.
Even if an inventory of kinds of belief and practice could be gathered so as to provide a typical profile of what counts as religion, some scholars would maintain that the differences between religions are more significant than their similarities. Moreover, in the absence of a tight definition there will always be a number of disputed cases. Thus, some political ideologies, such as communism and fascism, have been regarded as analogous to religion. Certain attempts at a functionalist definition of religion, such as that of the German American theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965), who defined religion in terms of human beings’ ultimate concern, would leave the way open to count these ideologies as proper objects of the study of religion (Tillich himself called them quasi-religions). Although there is still no agreement on this issue, the frontier between traditional religions and modern political ideologies remains a promising topic of study.
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Discussion about religion has been complicated further by the attempt of some Christian theologians, notably Karl Barth (1886–1968), to draw a distinction between religion and the Gospel (the proclamation peculiar to Christianity). This distinction depends to some extent upon taking a projectionist view of religion as a human product. This traditio...
Study of religion - Basic aims and methods: 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 ...
By studying different religious doctrines, rituals, stories, and scriptures, we can also come to understand how different communities of believers—past and present, East and West—have used their religious traditions to shape, sustain, transform themselves.
When anthropologists study religion, it can be helpful to consider both of these definitions because religion includes such varied human constructs and experiences as social structures, sets of beliefs, a feeling of awe, and an aura of mystery.
The study of religion prepares you for more than a career—it prepares you for life. Religion can inspire and provoke, unite and polarize. It is the primary expression of humanity's quest to find meaning and purpose.
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Religious Studies investigates the most basic components of human society and culture. The key to understanding the fundamental motivations for the behavior of human groups lies in the knowledge of religious beliefs and practices.
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