n 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. Geographers study religions and their development based on the role that geography intersects with other important social components within a human geographic approach. In my opinion, the study of different approaches to the study and comprehension of religions is indeed an exciting and important topic. Discussion about religion has been complicated further by the attempt of some Christian theologians, notably Karl Barth (18861968), to draw a distinction between religion and the Gospel (the proclamation peculiar to Christianity). Religion and 'The Study of Religions' has many approaches which try to investigate the core of what religion is and what it means to the people who practice it. Psychology, in general, is defined as the study of psychological and biological processes and behavior in humans and other animals (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013). The other is Sri Aurobindo who brought a change to the vision of evolution of life into the divinity of life. Manifestations of the sacred. We can say that there are different approaches that can be taken when studying 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. For critics, this is visible in three different ways. First, as religion is not a thing but a term of art, it is perfectly legitimateas suggested abovethat different dimensions of it are appropriated in different disciplines and areas of life. The stress on the distinction between the descriptive and normative approaches is becoming more frequent among scholars of religion. Often the scholar is confronted only with texts describing beliefs and stories, so the inner sentiments that these both evoke and express must be inferred. For Jung, religious experiences are manifestations of the archetypes in the collective unconscious in our own consciousness. Aside from being exploited, the workers were also dehumanized or alienated in the workplace. The disaggregating approach helps us answer this critique. 3 Phenomenological. Religion is also studied within cultural geography, which studies how cultural processes spread. 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). 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. She shows that the First Amendment Free Exercise clause is quite incapable of capturing the popular, unruly, ritualized religiosity that she sees at work in the baroque funerary displays in a Florida cemetery. The Christian theologian, for example, may see a particular historical process as providential. 47. Accordingly, God is just the projected ultimate father image that helps humans deal with their feelings of helplessness and guilt. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religions, University of California, Santa Barbara. Department of Religion Pearson 211 Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397 Email: religion@swarthmore.edu Phone: (610) 328-8045 Fax: (610) 328-7687 Yet we may wonder whether analogizing religion with conceptions of the good is satisfactory. Psychology is the study of human and animal behavior and how thinking processes operate. Approaches to ReligionSpring 2010REL 111. While theology attempts to understand the transcendent or . Some of the contributions of William James were his distinction between institutional religion and personal religion, his analysis of religious experiences as mystical experiences, and his pragmatic approach to the value of religionthat the truth and value of a religious belief for an individual depend on the beneficial effects of the belief on the life of the individual. Anthropologists, for example, legitimately study a key dimension of human experiencethe religious experiencein its diversity and unruliness. This had led some scholars, such as Tim Fitzgerald and Naomi Goldenberg, to draw the radical conclusion that the category of religion should be simply abandoned. *You can also browse our support articles here >. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. But because they wanted to know who would eventually be saved and enter heaven, they thought that financial success was one good indicator. For egalitarian theorists of religious freedom (as I call them), there is nothing special about religion as such. Methodologies in religious studies are the interpretive models on which the analysis of religious phenomena and resources are discussed. This approach teaches that there is only one true religion and only one way of salvation. Sociologists are primarily interested in examining the effects of religion on society. T here are many ways of studying religions. Conversely, theological claims may imply something about the history of a religion. describing how religion is experienced by practitioners. It looks at the percentage of each country's population that belongs to eight major religious groups, as of 2010. This idea led Calvinists to engage in activities that would increase their wealth, paving the way for the development of capitalism. The aims of the Diploma Programme world religions course are to enable students to: promote an inquiring, analytical and empathetic approach to the study of religion. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives. 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! Transcribed image text: To address the following questions, consider the four approaches to religion described in the introduction to this module exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism and empathetic interest in other people. The word anthropology means science of human beings or humanity. It r mzell2302 mzell2302 Your email address will not be published. . For a Christian, Christ is the only way of salvation and the Bible is the only source of saving revelation today. 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. Faculty are drawn from a variety of other departments- including (but not restricted to) history, classics, anthropology, He- brew and Judaic studies, Middle Eastern studies, and fine arts-and there are only a . St. Augustine used this theory to resolve the philosophical question, If everything comes from God, where does evil come from? According to him, evil exists in the world but it does not come from God, for what only comes from God is good. Corrections? 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. These theologians, through their works, systematically explain the main doctrines of their own respective religions. Author of, Robert Segal, Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland. 3.Theology requires its learners to have some degree of faith whereas religious studies does not . Some of these approaches focus on how to understand the beliefs and practices of particular religions, while some have more general concerns such as how religion relates to the nature of society, culture, human evolution, mind, and human behavior. d.) the impossibility of studying other cultures' religions. They argue, for example, that exemptions from general laws can be justified on the ground of conscience; and that what the state should not establish are conceptions of the good. For instance, a student of Christian theology is a Christian; but a student of religious studies studying Shintoism is usually not a Shintoist. Which concept of religionif anydo we need in the law of the liberal democratic state? This article examines three anthropological theories explaining how religion has evolved and continues to evolve. Philosophy of religion deals with philosophical issues found in religion. First, the secular state defines what religion is; religion is privatized as a faith whose object is the supernatural, and differentiates it from the natural and the rational which are the jurisdiction of the state. The other sense of the subjectivity of religion is properly a matter for theology and the philosophy of religion. In Marrett's view, the first form of religion was a belief in an ever-present and ubiquitous force that gave power to all elements of life (Durkheim 203). God, in this regard, serves as a source of security and forgiveness. In particular, a student of theology intends to deepen his/her understanding of a particular religion, while a student of religious studies intends to understand the different religions of the world. Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is an academic field devoted to research into religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. But nor does it reduce the normative inscription of religion in the law to a narrow (often ethnocentric) set of concerns and values. 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. 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. Introduces students to the study of religion, world religious traditions and ethics through an exploration of death and dying. (Ninian Smart,pp10-12,Dimension of the sacred an anatomy of the worlds beliefs ,Harper Collins Publisher 1196) We see from Smarts classifactory account, Smarts perspective in sustaining a phenomenological perception to the methodology of approach to the study, is far different from the approach that Sri Aurobindo use. In other words it is a fair and full study of all religions" (Whaling, 2006, "Theory and methods in religious studies: Contemporary approaches to the . Sociologists today employ three primary theoretical perspectives: the symbolic interactionist perspective, the functionalist perspective, and the conflict perspective. It is the logic of Natures process. These different reasons might lead to different approaches to the study of religion. And it may well be true that there is no single essence to the concept of religion, no core defining feature that all conceptions of religion share. Nigerias 2023 Elections: Which Way Democracy? The law does not describe and regulate the full experience of marriage: the fact that, in law, marriage is a contract does not mean that marriage is, or should be experienced as, a contract. 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. Other religions are sourced in man's rebellion against God and/or demonic influence. If religion is a western concept that has been used to shore up the authority of the colonial and sovereign state, through shifting, arbitrary demarcations between religion tradition, culture, reason, and the nation, then scholars should be wary of treating it as a stable, coherent object of academic study. Another illustration of religious beliefs is the creation stories we find in different religions. This course introduces students to the variety of academic approaches to the study of religion and to the procedures and sources used in writing academic papers in religious studies. Furthermore, if theology studies a particular religion always from the inside, religious studies study different religions mostly from the outside. Religious fundamentalism is the approach of those religious groups that look for the literal interpretation of original religious texts or books believing that teachings obtained from . The goods that the workers helped produced by means of their labor (using the materials and machines owned by the capitalists) were sold in the market at a certain value. It all depends on the person you are and the personal period of life you are going through. The author as part of his degree course has studied these two vastly differing approaches. In the literature, lived religion is treated variously as a term, a concept, an approach, and a field of studyor all of these. There are many different approaches to finding truth. Is it possible to understand a faith without holding it? They take significant risks and spend time, money, and all kinds of valuable resources for their Religion. In this lesson, we will discuss the difference between the scientific and the religious approach and will look at some examples of each. 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). Each perspective uniquely conceptualizes society, social . The fast, they abstain from sex, they walk on fire, perform self-flagellation, or nail themselves on crosses. The disaggregated approach does not claim that it captures the fullness of the lived, anthropological reality of religion. 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. There are doubts about how far there can be neutrality and objectivity in the study of religion. This means that a student of theology is a follower of the particular religion he/she is studying; whereas a student of religious studies is usually not a follower of the religions he/she is studying. Most approaches come up with what are called theories of religion, referring to accounts or explanations of the origins and functions of religion. Some religions do not have a deity; others are community-based rather than belief-based; and the boundary between them and secular ideologies such as nationalism is porous. As the world's largest democracy, India . 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