REL1300 Notes What is the academic study of Religion o Discourse written or spoken communication or debate v to speak or write authoritatively about a topic OAED In this class we will be looking at how traditions rituals and religions have been constructed through the use of discourse and force establishing relating to or deriving from a standard or norm OAED We will not be making normative claims about any religion or tradition in this course all are equal and up for discussion and analysis o Normative o Ideology o Sui Generis o Religion in the West the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group social class or individual OAED a screen that strategically veils mystifies or distorts important aspects of real social processes 32 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 The concept of the word was viewed through the lens of Christianity to which all other traditions were measured up These other traditions were then defined by the following Affirmations of Belief o Expected to have a set of creedal beliefs Excludes traditions such as Shinto Having a distinction between the sacred and the secular Exclusivity o Excludes Islam Chinese traditions o Excludes Sikhism Hinduism o Creating a list of characteristics to arrive at an essence of religion e g belief in personal god lacking in some forms of Buddhism life after death lacking in early forms of Judaism Exceptions always exist o Textbooks provisional definition religion is a sense of power beyond the human that is apprehended rationally as well as emotionally appreciated corporately as well as individually celebrated ritually and symbolically as well as discursively and transmitted in conventionalized forms as a tradition that offers people o an interpretation of experience o a view of life and death o a guide to conduct and o an orientation to meaning and purpose in the world o Rudolf Otto o Mircea Eliade Religion is a feeling inside you Sacred coming into the world and acting upon things Rituals o Emile Durkheim 1912 Social emphasis on religion Jonathan Z Smith J Z Smith o Only recently have we been able to imagine religion Smith uses the word religion as a scholarly category used to classify and analyze 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 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 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 What is the academic study of religion Anthropological Enterprise o 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 Bruce Lincoln Theses on Method o 3 Questions religion 13 theses meant to outline the academic approach to studying o Also distinguishes between that which is and that which In this short article Lincoln stresses the importance of discourse Theses 3 4 5 8 9 10 are most important for this class is not scholarly work 1 In what ways do the definitions of religion put forth by scholars like Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade differ from those put forth by J Z Smith and Bruce Lincoln The first two focus on spiritual feelings and the last 2 focus on 2 Think about the definition that your textbook uses Can you think of any other activities or ideologies that could fit into this definition analyzing and studying religion FSU Football 3 After reading these few pieces about the definition of religion what do you see as the main source of tension In other words why are there so many differing opinions on what religion is Varying definitions and vary viewpoints Craig Martin o What is religion Martin says throughout the book he will use the word in the colloquial No features are uniquely common to all traditions that we call religion sense Common definitions of religion o As a belief system o As something that contains supernatural matters o As matters of faith o As concerning the meaning of life o As concerning spirituality o As communal institutions oriented around a set of beliefs ritual practices Closest colloquial understanding of religion related to academic terms and ethical or social norms It serves some kind of function o o We can accomplish this by using the hermetic of suspicion Give more authority authenticate or legitimize Martin defines this as a method of interpretation that is suspicious of Functionalism whatever is being studied Similar to Lincoln s ideas The functions of this approach o Common use people do it with other religions that aren t theirs o Allows for deeper analysis of religious claims o As before just because something is cloaked in religious language does not o Allows us to see the inner workings of why things are the way they are If we take it all as true we have no reason to deeper analyze mean that it should not be exempt from critique or study In other words if we have an eye towards how truths have been created over time we can then see who gains from these truths and who does not o The term world religions seems to imply that religion is everywhere and can Organizing all these religions be found at any point in time Categorization and Classification o Self evident and found objectively in the world o They are categorized and arranged in a number of ways such as Binary Dichotomy East West Tripartite Near East South Asia Far East Near East relative to Europe Near is a relative term depends on where you are o What are some of the other ways that these things are categorized How does our textbook categorize world religions Monotheistic Polytheistic Book splits between east west west comes 1st Primitive One
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