Critics Not Caretakers

Critics Not Caretakers PDF Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100099676X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
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.

Critics Not Caretakers

Critics Not Caretakers PDF Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100099676X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Critics Not Caretakers

Critics Not Caretakers PDF Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791449431
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A lively critique of the study of religion in the modern academy, one that makes the scholar of religion a cultural critic rather than a caretaker of a religious tradition or a guru dispensing timeless wisdom.

The Religion of the Future

The Religion of the Future PDF Author: Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784787302
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
A new philosophy of religion for a secular world How can we live in such a way that we die only once? How can we organize a society that gives us a better chance to be fully alive? How can we reinvent religion so that it liberates us instead of consoling us? These questions stand at the center of Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s The Religion of the Future: an argument for both spiritual and political revolution. It proposes the content of a religion that can survive without faith in a transcendent God or in life after death. According to this religion—the religion of the future—human beings can be more human by becoming more godlike, not just later, in another life or another time, but right now, on Earth and in their own lives. They can become more godlike without denying the irreparable flaws in the human condition: our mortality, groundlessness, and insatiability.

Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order

Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order PDF Author: Andrew Dole
Publisher: AAR: Religion, Culture & Histo
ISBN: 0195341171
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
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.

The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion

The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion PDF Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441115781
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Thirty classic and contemporary readings - from such writers as Kant, Hume, Schleiermacher, and Otto, to Ninian Smart, Mircea Eliade, Karen McCarthy-Brown, and Wendy Doniger.

Latino and Muslim in America

Latino and Muslim in America PDF Author: Harold D. Morales
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190852607
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The experience and mediation of race-religion -- The first wave: from Islam in Spain to the Alianza in New York -- The second wave: Spanish dawah to women, online and in Los Angeles -- Reversion stories: the form, content, and dissemination of a logic of return -- The 9/11 factor: Latino Muslims in the news -- Radicals: Latino Muslim hip hop and the "clash of civilizations thing"--The third wave: consolidations, reconfigurations and the 2016 news cycle

A Clash of Ideologies

A Clash of Ideologies PDF Author: Randall Reed
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1556355149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Marxism is one of the revolutionary social-scientific theories that has come to have a prominent place in New Testament studies in the United States. It is often combined with liberation theology and applied to apocalyptic texts. This book argues that the basic presuppositions of these three ideological systems are ultimately at odds with one another. The study then traces the kinds of moves scholars in New Testament studies have made to overcome this problem.

The Discipline of Religion

The Discipline of Religion PDF Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134477996
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
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.

Modern Religion, Modern Race

Modern Religion, Modern Race PDF Author: Theodore M. Vial
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190212551
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
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.

Secular Theories on Religion

Secular Theories on Religion PDF Author: Tim Jensen
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 9788772895727
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Scholars of religious studies from Europe and North America explore what a secular, or scientific, study of religion should be like, what methods it should apply, what aims, and what kind of scientific thinking should be pursued. They also consider scholars as public intellectuals operating within and influenced by general societal developments. The 18 essays provide a survey of current thinking in the field. Distributed in the US by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.