REL1300 Midterm Study Guide o Mircea Eliade o Sacred coming into the world and acting upon things o Rituals o Rudolf Otto o Religion is a feeling inside you o Jonathan Z Smith o Only recently have we been able to imagine religion o Smith uses the word religion as a scholarly category used to classify and analyze o One of the most important things that one studying religion must do is to be able to articulate clearly why this rather than that As students of religion we must decide why this Judaism Shinto Etc gets to count as religion and why that E g Boy Scouts Football does not o Thus the data that we will look at in this course will be understood in their historical contexts as historical artifacts that occurred at specific points in time and space We will take this term religion to mean an ordinary category of human expression and activity o To understand Smith in his context he is pushing back against this desire to find the essence of a tradition or to find a catchphrase that describes a tradition s essence o Russell McCutcheon o What is the academic study of religion Anthropological Enterprise People This kind of approach stands apart from the kind of approach that theologians and religious institutions take The kinds of concerns and conclusions that the academic study of religion has draws are meant to be descriptive not to make value judgments on the data that is being evaluated The very word religion itself has a history behind it as do all words o McCutcheon is interested in the discourses that are concerned with identifying a supposedly deep and commonly shared core that unites that disparate group known as the world s religions o To participate in such a society one must share the same values and standards they also must want to understand and encounter others who are not like them o If groups are to be part of this pluralist society they must play by the same set of rules as others who take part in the same society The dominant group decides the rules Christians Media they decide whose voice is heard REL1300 Midterm Study Guide o If as Eck asserts in a world of religious pluralism commitments are not checked at the door then what do we do with those commitments which lead people to kill doctors who perform abortions or to work toward the violent overthrow of this or that regime 162 o McCutcheon is not opposed to the idea of pluralism For him what needs to be clear is the rhetoric that is behind the language of pluralism There are very real issues at stake when saying that everyone has an equal right to speak have their own commitments in other words pluralism masks the dominant group s hegemony if you don t play by their rules you don t get to speak o Martin says throughout the book he will use the word in the colloquial sense o No features are uniquely common to all traditions that we call religion o Craig Martin o Tomoko Masuzawa o Donald Lopez o The Invention of World Religions o Prisoners of Shangri La introduction o Buddhism became an object of western knowledge in the 1800s Scholars have been directly involved in deciding how Buddhism Buddhist texts should be interpreted o Understandings of Tibet have a dualistic nature o the pristine and the polluted the authentic and the derivative the holy and the demonic the good and the bad the play of opposites has been extreme in the case of Tibet Prisoners 4 o Nicholas Dirks o Castes of Mind o Writes about policing traditions and customs o Bruce Lincoln o Theses on Method 13 theses meant to outline the academic approach to studying religion Also distinguishes between that which is and that which is not scholarly work o In this short article Lincoln stresses the importance of discourse o Theses 3 4 5 8 9 10 are most important for this class o Emile Durkheim 1912 o Social emphasis on religion o Diana Eck o Professor at Harvard and creator of the Pluralism Project o Pluralism is Not diversity alone but energetic engagement with diversity REL1300 Midterm Study Guide Not tolerance alone but active seeking of understanding Allows us to gain knowledge of others and potentially removes stereotypes Not relativism but the encounter of commitments People should be allowed to talk despite their differences This does not mean that everyone at the table will agree with Based on dialogue one another Based on the common ground rules of the First Amendment Freedom of religion Based on nurturing constructive dialogue Not bashing each other s beliefs o Brent Nongbri o The further development of the concept of religion can be seen in the interaction between the Dutch and tribes in southern Africa identity through negative definition a group s identity is defined negatively in order to differentiate from other groups This kind of identity formation relies on the binary system that we ve discussed before false true natural revealed collective individual etc o Discourse o Sui generis o written or spoken communication or debate o Latin of its own kind this phrase is used to describe the idea that religion is separate from all other institutions the theorists that we will look at argue against thinking about religion in this way o the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group social class or o Ideology individual o pluralism o Oxtoby and Segal on Pluralism o Pluralism is about both recognizing and embracing diversity While they are similar pluralism is distinct from secularism o In pluralism all religions are said to be considered on an equal level Doing so is said to benefit society o However the same amount of freedom is not always afforded to all Any religious group will forfeit its right to acceptance if it engages in illegal activities or uses coercion 13 o O S agree that pluralism requires us to lose our sense of exceptionalism or superiority o Not diversity alone but energetic engagement with diversity o Not tolerance alone but active seeking of understanding REL1300 Midterm Study Guide Allows us to gain knowledge of others and potentially removes stereotypes o Not relativism but the encounter of commitments People should be allowed to talk despite their differences o Based on dialogue another This does not mean that everyone at the table will agree with one o Based on the common ground rules of the First Amendment Freedom of religion o Based on nurturing constructive dialogue Not bashing each other s beliefs o the functioning of society in relation to religion and traditions o social functionalism o syncretism o With many
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