where did the modern academic study of religion come from

What is the history of the academic study of religion?

Like virtually all scholarly disciplines in the modern university, the academic study of religion is a product of nineteenth-century Europe. Although influenced a great deal by European expansionism and colonialism.

What is the difference between the academic study of religion and theology?

As should be clear, these two enterprises therefore have very different data: the academic study of religion studies people, their beliefs, and their social systems; the theological study of religion studies God/the gods and their impact on people.

Is a religious studies major right for You?

So if studying both religion and the category “religion” as an interesting feature of the complex system of human behavior called society sounds appealing, then perhaps the Religious Studies major is right for you.

What is the anthropological approach to the study of religion?

In other words, the anthropological approach to the study of religion as practiced in the public university is a member of the human sciences and, as such, it starts with the presumption that religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions are observable, historical events that can therefore be studied in the same manner as all human behavior.

What is the study of religion?

What is theological study of religion?

What does "religion" mean in Latin?

Which amendment states that all citizens have the right to believe in any religion?

Is religion an English word?

Is religion an anthropological study?

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Where did religious studies originate?

Religious studies originated in the nineteenth century, when scholarly and historical analysis of the Bible had flourished, and Hindu and Buddhist texts were first being translated into European languages. Early influential scholars included Friedrich Max Müller in England and Cornelius P. Tiele in the Netherlands.

What is the academic study of religion?

The academic study of religion is based on the fundamental distinction between studying about religion as a field of inquiry and being religious or a religious practitioner.

Where did modern Christianity come from?

Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who proclaimed the imminent Kingdom of God and was crucified c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea.

Where does religion derive from?

The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo Norman (1200s AD) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what is sacred, reverence for the gods. It is ultimately derived from the Latin word religiō.

When did religious studies begin emerging as an academic field?

19th centuryThe academic study of religion as we know it today can be traced to the 19th century encounter of Western scholars and theologians with non-Western cultures. In the United States, departments of Religious Studies began to emerge in public universities beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Why is the academic study of religion important?

The academic study of religion is an ideal way to explore religious ideas from a variety of perspectives. Religion is one of the primary means for people wanting to explore the human condition of existence. Researching religion means having the chance to learn how others understand existence and our purpose.

When did modern Christianity begin?

The history of modern Christianity concerns the Christian religion from the beginning of the 15th century to the end of World War II. It can be divided into the early modern period and the late modern period.

Does Jesus have a last name?

0:005:49What was Jesus's Real Name? - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipReal name Jesus's name in Hebrew was Yeshua.MoreReal name Jesus's name in Hebrew was Yeshua.

What was the religion before Christianity?

Sometimes called the official religion of ancient Persia, Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest surviving religions, with teachings older than Buddhism, older than Judaism, and far older than Christianity or Islam. Zoroastrianism is thought to have arisen “in the late second millennium B.C.E.

Who is first religion in the world?

Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, according to many scholars, with roots and customs dating back more than 4,000 years.

When did religion first appear?

Prehistoric evidence of religion. The exact time when humans first became religious remains unknown, however research in evolutionary archaeology shows credible evidence of religious-cum-ritualistic behavior from around the Middle Paleolithic era (45–200 thousand years ago).

What is the history of religion?

The history of religion refers to the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,220 years ago (3200 BC).

What is the academic study of religion not concerned with?

The academic study of religion is not concerned with evaluating truth claims. The scholar of religion seeks not to discover what is religiously true or false, but to understand the truth claims made by particular religious traditions.

What is academic theology?

Theology, defined specifically as academic theology, belongs as a legitimate area of expertise in ie study of religion. lAcademic theologians, like historianss comparatists, philosophers, and social scientists of religion, should hold a rightful and honorable place as teachers and scholars in the discipline.

What is the difference between theology and the academic study of religion?

The main difference between theology and religious studies is that theology focuses on the systematic study of the divine power or supernatural forces, and religious studies focus on human dimensions of religion rather than rituals and scriptures that humans have made.

What is the study of Christianity called?

Christian theology is the study of Christian belief and practice. Such study concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and the New Testament as well as on Christian tradition. Christian theologians use biblical exegesis, rational analysis and argument.

What Is the Academic Study of Religion? – Religious Studies

By Tim Davis. A Student’s Perspective. As an entering freshman at The University of Alabama I knew that my older sister, a junior at the time, was a Religious Studies major but I had no clue as to what she studied. Because she told me that she had taken courses in Tibetan Buddhism and the Hebrew Bible, I assumed that Religious Studies majors did all of their coursework studying descriptive ...

What is the Academic Study of Religion? – Sowing the Seed

Take a minute to think about your school how it organizes its curriculum. For example, checkout The University of Alabama's Core Curriculum/General Education requirements. At one level, its organization suggests that students who have passed through the halls of higher education will have had exposure to a breadth of subject matters. These subjects are not topic,…

The Academic Study of Religion

Gill: Academic Study of Religion 969 Reduction means to render data in terms of a chosen perspective, to look at a subject from one perspective or theory among many.

Studying Religion from an Academic Perspective - Free Essays

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The Academic Study of Religion | Religious Studies | University of ...

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When did the study of religion begin?

In the United States, departments of Religious Studies began to emerge in public universities beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s. The American Academy of Religion, ...

What is the academic study of religion?

The academic study of religion rests on the basic distinction between studying about religion as a field of inquiry and being religious or a religious practitioner.

How many members does the American Academy of Religion have?

The American Academy of Religion, the preeminent association of scholars of Religious Studies in North America, was formed in 1964 and now has over 11,000 members, including faculty and graduate students from colleges, universities, and divinity schools all over North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

What is the study of religion?

The academic study of religion is an inherently interdisciplinary field, incorporating textual studies of the world's sacred texts, language studies, art, history, philosophy, anthropology, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, comparative literature and literary studies, cultural studies, gender and ethnic studies, legal studies, and other approaches in order to better understand, compare, interpret, and analyze those beliefs, practices, traditions, communities, artifacts, and other phenomena we call "religious."

Who said education is not complete without a study of comparative religion?

Writing for the majority, Justice Clark asserted that one's "education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization.".

Is religion a persistent study?

The Academic Study of Religion. "Religion is powerful and persistent, and it shows no signs of disappearing. It provokes heartfelt commitment, eloquent expression, forthright action, and intense debate.

Who was the first person to study religion?

One of the earliest attempts to systematize the seemingly conflicting Greek myths and thereby bring order into this rather chaotic Greek tradition was the Theogony of the Greek poet Hesiod (flourished c. 700 bce ), who rather laboriously put together the genealogies of the gods.

What is the primary impulse that prompts many to study religion?

The primary impulse that prompts many to study religion, however, happens to be the Western one . On the whole, in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages the various approaches to religion grew out of attempts either to criticize or to defend particular systems and to interpret religion in harmony with changes in knowledge.

Why did God adapt to pagan traditions?

First, the theory arose that God adapts customs and rites to a pagan style in order to combat paganism itself—as a concession to the human condition. This theory could be used to explain the divergencies of practice within Christendom and to show points of contact between Christianity and paganism.

How did Islamic theology impact Christianity?

Meanwhile, Islamic theology had had an impact on Western Christianity, notably upon medieval Scholastic philosophy, in which the values of both reason and revelation were maintained . Muslim knowledge of other religions was more advanced than European knowledge, notably in the work of the theologian Ibn Ḥazm (994–1064).

What was the need for comparative treatment of religion?

The need for a comparative treatment of religion became clear, and this need prepared the way for more modern developments. Also preparatory for the modern study of religion was the new trend toward more or less systematic compilations of mythological and other material, stimulated partly by the Renaissance itself and partly by the discovery of the Americas and other lands. Europeans were introduced to the richness and variety of human customs and beliefs. The most important figures in the exploration of the religions of the non-European world were the Spanish monk Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499–1590), who conscientiously gathered information in New Spain, J. Lafitau (1685–1740), a French missionary in Canada, and the Italian Jesuits Roberto De Nobili (1577–1656) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). The last two, who brought to bear a deep understanding of Indian and Chinese cultures, were unparalleled in that area of study until modern times. Thus, some of De Nobili’s discussions with Brahmans ( priests) were probably the first profound dialogues between Hindus and Christians. The inquiries of the 16th to 18th century thus initiated an accumulation of data about other cultures that stimulated studies of the religions of other cultures.

Which philosopher was skeptical of religion?

The Stoics (philosophers of nature and morality) opted for a form of naturalistic monotheism, whereas the philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bce) was skeptical of religion as ordinarily understood and practiced, though he did not deny that there were gods who, however, had no transactions with human beings.

Which philosophers were speculative?

The rise of speculative philosophy among the Ionian philosophers, especially Thales of Miletus, Heracleitus, and Anaximander, led to a more critical and more rationalistic treatment of the gods.

What does a religious studies degree study?

With these common assumptions on the table, one can now see what the student pursuing a degree in Religious Studies strives towards: studying the who’s, when’s, what’s, where’s, and why’s of that set of data referred to as religion. By asking these questions with the methodology of a scholar such as Bruce Lincoln, the student of religion sees his or her object of study as an interesting facet of a complex human socio-behavioral world. Thus the student of religion studies those human behaviors that discourse–the sum total of assumptions, ideas, conventions, etc. concerning a subject–deems as religious. When one begins to ask the right questions, and look into the historical context of the data being studied, then one realizes that people the world over contest the category “religion.” In this light one sees that the student of religion not only studies world religions, but also that the student evaluates how and why an institution, movement, or group gets to count as a world religion.

What is the assumption that one must be religious to study religion?

Assumption 2. One Must be a Religious Adherent in Order to Study Religion. Another misconception that is widespread regarding the study of religion is that one must be religious in order to study or know about religion. This assumption comes from the fact that many people believe religion to be a word that names a collection of privileged–that is, ...

Is religion a category?

This assumption comes from the fact that many people believe religion to be a word that names a collection of privileged–that is, beyond critique–beliefs and behaviors. On the contrary, religion, as it is studied in the secular state university, is both a category and an aspect of human behavior that must be subjected to the same types ...

Is religious studies considered religious?

Put differently, the “studies” of Religious Studies scholars and students are not “religious”; rather, scholars and students in Religious Studies study that set of data that humans classify as religious, while asking question such as what gets to count as “religious” and what are the implications of classifying something as “religious.”.

Who said "Reverence is a religious, and not a scholarly virtue"?

Bruce Lincoln, a prominent University of Chicago scholar, makes this point in a brief article entitled, “ Theses on Method ” by saying: “The same destabilizing and irreverent questions one might ask of any speech act ought to be posed of religious discourse…. Reverence is a religious, and not a scholarly virtue.”.

Is religion a good major?

So if studying both religion and the category “religion” as an interesting feature of the complex system of human behavior called society sounds appealing, then perhaps the Religious Studies major is right for you.

What was the study of religion in the nineteenth century?

Academic study in the nineteenth century was often tied to Christian theological interests and institutions, but this is not to say that all religious study was simply apologetics . Early scholars in the emerging field of North American comparative religions included James Freeman Clark (Harvard Divinity School), who published Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology in 1871. Between the 1860s and 1900 several religiously oriented university chairs were appointed at places such as Harvard, Boston University, Princeton, and Cornell — Clark's appointment as "Professor of Natural Religion and Christian Doctrine" at Harvard being one example. Although these chairs did not represent a full-fledged comparative religion such as was emerging in Europe, they did portend a trend away from singly theological reflections and apologetics. In addition to Clark, other scholars included W. D. Whitney, James Freeman Clarke, and George Foot Moore. In 1892 T. W. Rhys Davids, a British scholar of Buddhism, was invited to lecture at the newly established "American Lectures on the History of Religions," a joint venture among several colleges and universities. In the same year the University of Chicago established a department devoted to the study of comparative religion.

What is religious studies?

Following the lead of these divinity schools, "religious studies" emerged as an academic discipline during the 1960s and 1970s in private and state universities. Religious studies include disciplinary approaches such as anthropology, sociology, history, and philology. Other approaches are geographic or chronological, such as religion in America, East Asian cultures and religions, and ancient Near Eastern studies. Others are drawn from doctrinal or community boundaries, such as Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, or Christian studies.

What are the organizations that study religion?

Professional organizations in the study of religion arrange conferences (regional, national, and international), disseminate information, support various publications (books, conference volumes, and journals), and publicize the field. The American Academy of Religion (AAR), founded in 1909 and incorporated in 1964, includes scholars from several disciplines and promotes reflections and teachings focusing on a critical understanding of religious traditions, issues, questions, and values. The AAR collects and publishes data and statistics about theology and religious studies programs and sponsors the publication of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR). The North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR), formed in 1985, is devoted to historical, comparative, structural, theoretical, and cognitive approaches to the study of religion. The NAASR is affiliated with the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). Its journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR) examines theoretical issues and pedagogical and research methods. The Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion (CCSR) is a consortium of several other academic societies in the field of religious studies (including the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies). It coordinates research and publications and was originally formed in 1971 to coordinate research among the different societies and to publish the bilingual (French and English) journal Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses (SR). The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) was founded in 1949 by scholars in religious studies and social sciences. Its Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JSSR) generally focuses on sociological approaches to the study of religion. There are additional organizations that support or publish academic studies of religion either from outside the field (such as those devoted to anthropology or literature) or from area studies within the field. Area and topical studies organizations are numerous. Examples include the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), and the Society for Tantric Studies (STS). Numerous other journals publish religious studies topics, such as History of Religions, Religion, and Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

What is the combination of area study and disciplinary history?

The combination of area study with the study of disciplinary history is a primary manifestation of this trend toward rigorous disciplinary self awareness. Steven M. Wasserstrom (Judaic studies), Robert A. Orsi (religion in America), Sam D. Gill (religion and cultural studies), and many others practice this new trend in their scholarship and published works. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (1999) carefully explores the mystical and poetic influences on the formation of the discipline in the works of three scholars (of Judaism, history of religions, and Islamic studies respectively). Part of understanding how to practice the study of religion is through understanding the genealogy of the study itself in North America. Gill's Storytracking: Texts, Stories, and Histories in Central Australia (1997) presents several aspects of the contemporary trend to careful contextual research and self-critique. Storytracking presents the worldview of Australian Aboriginal religion by applying the Aboriginal peoples' own methods of narrative to the study of Australian Aboriginal culture and thereby also provides critique of previous scholarship that distorted the data. As such it provides both an original study of Aboriginal culture and a critique of the academic study of religion.

What was the religious movement in the 1960s?

In the late 1960s and early 1970s colleges and universities established departments of religious studies as part of larger cultural trends. The "red scare" and anticommunist political mood encouraged interest in and defense of religion as a defining feature of the democratic cultures. It was also a time of assertive revivalism, creativity, and change within traditional American religious communities. Vatican II and liberal Protestant theology revitalized Christian interests in "religion." A new conservatism that emphasized historical and textual study also emerged. The 1960s counterculture was fascinated with so-called exotic traditions, such as Buddhism and yoga, and also antitraditional explorations of occultism. Changing immigration policies and patterns, the proliferation of media, international affairs, and geopolitical interests in the Middle East and Asia all contributed to a vast increase in international and multicultural interests. U.S. and Canadian trends in higher education reflected these social and intellectual trajectories, and the result was an explosion of liberal arts and cultural studies programs (religious, women's, ethnic, and others).

What is the social science of religion?

At the same time American social scientific studies of religion viewed religion not as self-generated phenomena understandable only on its own terms but as a cultural product. Human beings generate the varied religious practices and beliefs that they employ for a variety of contingent, political, personal, and social purposes. This kind of science is described as reductive: it examines religion not as a special subject but as a product of social life that can be explained with the same intellectual tools as other human phenomena, such as political parties, psychological pathology, or marketing trends. Although this orientation grew out of American social scientific concerns for "religion in culture," it echoed in many ways Europe's "scientific study of religion" more than the "history of religions" and "religious studies" common in North American divinity schools and religious studies departments. Some of the North American scholars who approached religion in these ways included Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, Bryan Wilson, and Robert Bellah as well as others in sociology who devoted significant attention to the study of religion. The works of Clifford Geertz, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner contributed both description and theory to the anthropological study of religion.

What is the intermixture of humanities and social sciences?

The intermixture of humanities and social sciences approaches and the additions of original approaches from cultural studies in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries has led to considerable diversity in the discussions and discourses on religion. It is not possible to collect a canon of a dozen authors and thereby gain an overview of North American academic approaches to religion. In this broadly diverse and creatively rich context, all scholars share, in principle, an insistence on intellectual rigor and critical self-awareness. The lack of an all-encompassing theme in the field reflects the shared insistence on focusing on religion in specific historical contexts (regardless of the analytical and intellectual methods employed). Significant in this American trend is the plethora of critical examinations of the role of subjectivity in all productions of knowledge (in universities and popular culture). Scholars of previous generations often critically examined political authority or religious truth claims, yet they sometimes failed to use these same critical methods to examine their own productions of knowledge about complex human phenomena (whether religion, culture, or politics). Beginning from different backgrounds and presuppositions, contemporary scholars employ the principle of contesting and examining everything, not just the subject matter but also scholarship and the academy itself.

Prehistory of the Study of Religion

It is commonly accepted that the modern study of religion in Japan started in the Meiji era (1868 – 1912), after Japan opened its doors to the Western world. The Japanese word for religion, shūkyō, was also coined at the beginning of the era as a translation of the Western term.

Early Developments (1905 – 1945)

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, universities modeled after Western, particularly German, institutions began to be founded in Japan. While there were a number of private universities, some of which had either Buddhist or Christian backgrounds, a few national universities were granted a leading position in research and teaching.

Developments Since 1945

With the end of the Second World War, it was publicly admitted that State Shint ō was, indeed, a religion. The Shint ō Directive, which specified the occupation policy on religion, was issued in 1945 to abolish the entire system of State Shint ō. At the same time the imperial family was demythologized to allow a democracy to be established.

Bibliography

Anesaki Masaharu. Buddhist Art in Its Relation to Buddhist Ideals, with Special Reference to Buddhism in Japan. Boston, 1915, reprint, New York, 1978.

Extract

At the end of the twentieth century, scholars in the academic study of religion made what we might call “the reflexive turn,” in that they picked up the tools of genealogy, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies and they began in earnest to reflect critically on their own conceptual categories.

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What is the study of religion?

Like virtually all scholarly disciplines in the modern university, the academic study of religion is a product of nineteenth-century Europe. Although influenced a great deal by European expansionism and colonialism (the study of religion is largely the product of Europeans encountering—through trade, exploration, and conquest—new beliefs and behaviors, sometimes understood as strange, sometimes as familiar), early scholars of religion were interested in collecting and comparing beliefs, myths, and rituals found the world over. After all, early explorers, soldiers, and missionaries were all returning to Europe with their diaries and journals filled with tales that, despite their obvious exoticness, chronicled things that bore a striking resemblance to Christian beliefs and behaviors. As such, early scholars tried to perfect the use of the non-evaluative comparative method in the cross-cultural study of people’s religious beliefs, “our’s” and “their’s”. To compare in a non-evaluative manner means that one searches for observable, documentable similarities and differences without making normative judgments concerning which similarities or differences were good or bad, right or wrong, original or derivative, primitive or modern.

What is theological study of religion?

To phrase it another way, we could say that, whereas the anthropologically-based study of religion is concerned with the descriptive “is” of human behavior, the theological study of religion is generally concerned with the prescriptive “ought” of the gods. As should be clear, these two enterprises therefore have very different data: ...

What does "religion" mean in Latin?

The closest we come when looking for Latin precursors to our modern term “religion” are terms such as religare or religere which, in their original contexts, simply meant such things as “to bind something tightly together” or “to pay close or careful attention to something.”.

Which amendment states that all citizens have the right to believe in any religion?

It may well be significant that, in the opening lines of the First Amendment, it is made explicit that all citizens of the U.S. have the absolute right to believe in any or no religion whatsoever. In 1963 a landmark case known as the School District of Abington Township, PA vs. the Schempp family came before the Court.

Is religion an English word?

Perhaps you never thought about it before, but the very term “religion” has a history and it is not obvious just how we ought to define the term. Obviously, “religion” is an English term; therefore, we can ask, “Do non-English speakers have religions? Would an ancient Egyptian name something as ‘a religion’?”

Is religion an anthropological study?

The academic study of religion is fundamentally an anthropological enterprise. That is, it is primarily concerned with studying people ( anthropos is an ancient Greek term meaning “human being”; logos means “word” or a “rational, systematic discourse”), their beliefs, behaviors, and institutions, rather than assessing “the truth” or “truths” ...

The Early Roots of The Academic Study of Religion

• Academic study in the nineteenth century was often tied to Christian theological interests and institutions, but this is not to say that all religious study was simply apologetics. Early scholars in the emerging field of North American comparative religions included James Freeman Clark (Harvard Divinity School), who published Ten Great Religions: A...

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Religious Studies and Related Disciplines

Contemporary Trends

Institutional Trends in Colleges and Universities

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