Each of these approaches can be applied to the study of religious diversity. First of all we have to say that both, Smart and Aurobindo have not defined religion from objective point of view but rather to determine religion in terms of its own value. Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. But the historical process itself has to be investigated scientificallythat is, by considering the evidence, using the techniques of historical enquiry and other scientific methods. Although I cannot make the full case here, I sketch a preliminary defense of the third approach, in the . The reflexive effect of the study of religion on religion itself may in practice make it more difficult for the student of religion to adopt the detachment required by bracketing. It r mzell2302 mzell2302 Theologians adopt a more content-based approach: they study the texts and dogma which capture our fundamental dependence on a greater order of things. We can confirm that the method of study that Smart used in his approach comprehend both external and internal analysis of religion, characterized by phenomenological perspectives. There are two main reasons for this suspicion. Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. Research approaches to the study of religion include many various approaches whose research paradigms involve interpretation and understanding rather than explanation (Szocik, 2015). Instead, I shall merely sketch an alternative strategy. One contribution of St. Augustine was his theory that evil is the absence of good (which he adopted from the view of the Greek philosopher Plotinus on the nature of light and darkness). In the Australian context, the interdisciplinary pedagogy that defines global studies is gaining wider acceptance as a coherent and necessary approach to the study of global change. There are religions, however, in which even worship rituals are not central. The stage from man to super being is the next which depends from the approach of the achievement on the evolution on earth. 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. develop an informed understanding of the diversity of world religions. Two famous and highly influential Christian theologians who also engaged in philosophy of religion were St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. "The notion that such a study is the objective and comparative study of religion. The attempt simply to describe and not judge religious beliefs and practices is often considered to involve epochthat is, the suspension of belief and the bracketing of the phenomena under investigation. 427-5290. adlerj@kenyon.edu. R.R. In my opinion, the study of different approaches to the study and comprehension of religions is indeed an exciting and important topic. It has emerged as the single most important means of communication for those interested in critical approaches to the study of religion. Erin has an M.Ed in adult education and a BS in psychology and a BS in management systems. 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. Different approaches to religion education have been in place for a long time or developed more recently to meet growing religious and cultural plurality in European countries and schools. Aurobindo offers no guidance upon other religions as his account is purely personal. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) defines religion as "a unified system of beliefs and describing how religion is experienced by practitioners. Others have no clear vision upon their religious identity and are searching possible traditions, ready to meet their spiritual exploration .So they start looking for different approaches to their study ,bringing along different opinions and whatever the process and methodology is, will bring them information from which eventually they will find answers or give opinion. 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 . But because they wanted to know who would eventually be saved and enter heaven, they thought that financial success was one good indicator. One of the many reasons for this failure is that each discipline enlisted to study religion has its own distinctive methods and topics, and scholars often disagree about how to resolve the inevitable conflicts between these different intellectual perspectives. Religion is a concept created by modern scholars and superimposed on a variety of different phenomena for a variety of motives. Attempts have been made to find a distinctive ingredient in all religions, such as the numinous, or spiritual, experience, the contrast between the sacred and the profane, and the belief in one or more gods. 2. J.F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religions, University of California, Santa Barbara. Both methods tried to avoid the phenomenological approach. These two neighboring countries have different legal systems and, of course, their own unique characteristics. On the other hand, comparative religion refers to a branch of religious studies that is concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices of two or more particular religions. Ontology. First, different disciplines will have different answers to the question of what the concept of religion is for; and as a result they will work with different conceptions of religion. 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). Chapter 1 in the It may perhaps intensify your religious experience. Third, the secular separation between a privatized, individualized sphere of religion and a public, social, rational sphere of politics has obscured the way in which the state, the nation, and the law operate as the modern sacred. But it is necessary to be clear about what objectivity and subjectivity in religion mean. The findings that focus on the scientific study of religion, including the SSSR and the SSR units within the AAR, are especially highlighted, as are contrasts between sociological and psychological approaches in the academic study of religion. The study of multiple religious traditions in order to prove the existence or non-existence of God The scholarly examination and comparison of the beliefs, rituals, customs, and traditions of two or more religions Philosophy of religion tries to settle issues in religion solely by means of the human power of reasoning. It can use either separately or in any combination the methods of history, sociology, (James L.Cox,p.159.A guide to the Phenomenology of religion .key figure ,formative influence and subsequent debate. Geographers study religions and their development based on the role that geography intersects with other important social components within a human geographic approach. 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. How can we best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of religion, non-establishment and the like? In the last quarter of the 20th century, four approaches to cultural studies drew growing attention. Aurobindo did not just stick to an immanental experience of a divine being but that there must be transcendence within the individuals life which is seen in Auroville with a lived approach to ones faith rather like that which is common within Charismatic and Evangelical Churches. Such distinctions, however, only serve to shore up the arbitrary power that the state has to demarcate the sphere of its own sovereignty. But objections have been brought against all these attempts, either because the rich variety of religions makes it easy to find counterexamples or because the element cited as central is in some religions peripheral. For critics, this is visible in three different ways. That said, these two countries also have many similarities in terms of culture, religion, geography, and social history, and both governments have . I do not think it is, although I cannot make the full case here. The author as part of his degree course has studied these two vastly differing approaches. The belief in the soul as something separate from the body though residing in the body resulted from dealing with certain biological questions such as those concerning the difference between a living body and a dead one; the causes of waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death; and the origin of dreams and visions involving human images. It is present in varying forms in the religions of the lower races up to the civilized races of mankind. This means, among others, that the philosophy of religion justifies claims by the strength and coherence of arguments. (Note that no assumption is made about the actual disciplinary location of scholars. Nigerias 2023 Elections: Which Way Democracy? This distinction depends to some extent upon taking a projectionist view of religion as a human product. Copyright 2019 - 2022 Elcomblus Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Phone: 212-377-2700 Fax: 212-377-2727. d.) the impossibility of studying other cultures' religions. As it happens, one group of influential political philosophers has tried to do just that. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis, which generally claims that our behaviors are largely controlled by our unconscious mind which contains our repressed sexual and violent desires. As we examine the different disciplinal approaches to the study of religion, we shall briefly touch on some of the external theories of religion. Approaches to ReligionSpring 2010REL 111. 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. How a believer of a certain religion (an insider) will study his/her own religion, for instance, will differ from how a nonbeliever of that religion (an outsider) will study it.Their motivations and methods will be different. (Peter Connolly,pp1-2Approche to the Study of Religion,Biddles L.T.D.) Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood have shown, for instance, that liberal secularism requires individual beliefnot communal observance, rituals or embodied pietyto be taken as the essence of religiosity. These studies suggest the significance of religion in health communication and in our . II. It may well be, for example, that, in their exclusive focus on the claims of individual conscience, egalitarian theorists have neglected the normative importance of other dimensions of lived religion, such as the centrality of traditional collective rituals to the moral lives of believers. The disaggregated approach does not claim that it captures the fullness of the lived, anthropological reality of religion. The author will attempt to evaluate the strengths and weakness of two approaches to religion and try to compare the work of the two representations and their methodology .The first is Professor Ninian Smart as he wrote widely, regarding different topics in religions, with papers and articles appearing in a vast range of publication sand television worldwide developing his own vision and philosophy of human progress and spiritual evolution. 3 Phenomenological. The author will attempt to evaluate the strengths and weakness of two approaches to religion and try to compare the work of the two representations and their methodology .The first is Professor Ninian Smart as he wrote widely, regarding different topics in religions, with papers and articles appearing in a vast range of . What Wittgenstein said about the concept of game also applies to the concept of religion: the fact that we cannot identify a single feature that all religions exhibit does not mean that the concept of religion is meaningless. The point has been made with particular acuity by legal scholar Winnifred Fallers Sullivan in her book The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. William James (1842-1910) focused on the psychological process that occurs in a religious conversion, when a nonreligious person becomes religious (Merkur 2005, 172). 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. In fact, the religions of civilized races evolved from the animism of the lower races. Can we truly compare two totally different views religion one very internal the other very visual? The absence of good (the moral kind) is caused by our disobedience to the will of God. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! Significance is reported at the p < .10 level. Psychology of religion is the application of the different psychological theories and methods to explain religious phenomena, which include the belief in God, religious experiences and behaviors, and spirituality. All work is written to order. For example different opinions regarding the Trinity between Roman Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses. Rituals, practices and texts focused on death provide the basis for comparative study of Asian and Western religious approaches to the meaning and mystery of death as it confronts individuals and communities. The final approach to world religions is exclusivism. The book is a vast collection of rituals, myths, and religions organized by patterns and themes, which made extensive use of sources from primitive and folk cultures (Paden 2005, 213). So how would Aurobindo address questions upon doctrine say within the New Testament? Durkheim argued that "religion happens . Sullivan demonstrates that religion is too complex, too comprehensive, and too multi-faceted to be adequately captured by the law of the liberal state. The distinction, however, is not an absolute one, for, as has been noted, descriptions of religion may sometimes incorporate theories about religion that imply something about the truth or other normative aspects of some or all religions. Religion is both a fascinating and an essential subject of study. It may well be that egalitarian theorists have picked a normatively problematic, or normatively narrow, analogy for religion. He explains that such experience definitely will change positions on previous views regarding religious tradition. 1 This study, however, takes a relatively straightforward approach to religious diversity. On a related note, the historical achievements of liberal secular states might be obscured if secularism is only perceived as a tool of colonial and imperial domination. Particularly, this study used an interdisciplinary approach, that is, a combination of religious and social approaches. It is the logic of Natures process. For the last four decades universities and schools have been acting in response to a constant, steady demand for courses upon the study of religion. So the starting point of the disaggregation strategy is to accept that, as religion is indeed not a thing but a term of art (it has different meanings in different contexts), different dimensions of it will be appropriated in different ways in different disciplines. the myths of a religion. It is an illusion because it is just a product of the human imagination. Introduces students to the study of religion, world religious traditions and ethics through an exploration of death and dying. Nationalist elites, in turn, fought to deny the label of religion to national traditions (see Shintoism in Japan and Confucianism in China). Box No. Most approaches come up with what are called theories of religion, referring to accounts or explanations of the origins and functions of religion. Certain attempts at a functionalist definition of religion, such as that of the German American theologian Paul Tillich (18861965), who defined religion in terms of human beings ultimate concern, would leave the way open to count these ideologies as proper objects of the study of religion (Tillich himself called them quasi-religions). Christian neo-orthodoxy can be placed as a middle position between traditional orthodoxy and liberalism. Other researchers of religion, such as Cornelius Petrus Tiele (1830-1902), preferred the term ' comparative religion '. 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We best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of,. Even worship rituals are not central other important social components within a human.... Famous and highly influential Christian theologians who also engaged in philosophy of religion well be egalitarian... But it is necessary to be clear about what objectivity and subjectivity in religion mean 2022 Media! The 20th century, four approaches to the study of religion in health communication and in our study... Would eventually be saved and enter heaven, they thought that financial success was one good.. Approaches can be placed as a human geographic approach Note that no assumption is about! A unified system of beliefs and describing how religion is a trading of.
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