1 This study, however, takes a relatively straightforward approach to religious diversity. This is an important critique, which draws on what I have called the first (critical) and the second (anthropological) approach to religion. Related to Freuds concept, the personal unconscious mind contains all our personal experiences that we are not aware of (because we have suppressed them); whilethe 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. Learn about sociologists . Thus, the matter of coming to understand the inner side of a religion involves a dialectic between participant observation and dialogical (interpersonal) relationship with the adherents of the other faith. Historiography then becomes the science that studies the conceptions and production of historical interpretations of human civilization. The implications of the first approach have been resisted in many quarters. 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. If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! For Jung, religious experiences are manifestations of the archetypes in the collective unconscious in our own consciousness. The etymological meaning of the word theologybased on its Greek origin, namely theo, which means God, and logos which means discourse or study,is study of God. Theology, however, is not just limited to the study of the nature ofGod, for it also studies in a systematic way the main doctrines of a particular religion. Her last book is Critical Republicanism. APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION WILLIAM E. ARNAL New York University has a religious studies program, but not a de- partment. A field study was conducted to achieve the objective of this research. Ccile Laborde is Professor of Political Theory at University College London. The term theology, though often used to refer to Christian theology, also applies to the systematic study of the other monotheistic religions, standardly referring to Judaism and Islam. So he is proposing a mystical goal and from his yogic teachings he guides,shows and achieves that. The works of both Sri Aurobindo and Ninian Smart shows two drastic and completely different approaches to religion. 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. As a belief system, religion shapes what people think and how they see the world. Nigerias 2023 Elections: Which Way Democracy? To a great extent, the meanings now attached to the terms religion and religions have tended to promote the study of religion in order to understand the world in which we live rather than as part of a desire for personal religious self-fulfillment. As an academic discipline, anthropology studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and culture that decisively distinguish humans from other animal species. Anthropology has two major fields: physical anthropology, which studies the the origin, evolution, and diversity of people, and cultural anthropology, which studies culture in all of its aspects and uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography and ethnology, folklore, and linguistics in its descriptions and analyses of the diverse peoples of the world (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013). 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. 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. Religious rituals are behaviors or practices that are either required or expected of the members of a particular group, such as bar mitzvah or confession of sins (Barkan and Greenwood 2003). Last November, Chris had the pleasure of chatting to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi about the psychological approach, how one applies it to . Sociology is one such approach that this essay will be looking at through its founding fathers Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. Study for free with our range of university lectures! Approaches to Religious/Worldview Studies 1 Sociological. Theologians adopt a more content-based approach: they study the texts and dogma which capture our fundamental dependence on a greater order of things. Among the many faiths represented here are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. We pick out, from the complex notion of religion that we have inherited, distinct elements and values that democratic law has good reason to protect. II. Religion is both a fascinating and an essential subject of study. In the above definition Marx has stressed few points about religion which require special emphasis. Can we categorize all religions within Ninian Smart definitions? It r mzell2302 mzell2302 The Hijab Controversy in Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2008). Here I focus on two objectionswhich, for ease of presentation, I call the anthropological and the normative objection. The disaggregating approach helps us answer this critique. c.) the truth or falsity of religion. As noted, there is a specific pedagogical William James (1842-1910) focused on the psychological process that occurs in a religious conversion, when a nonreligious person becomes religious (Merkur 2005, 172). Tylor, in his work Primitive Culture (1871), claimed that the essence of religion or the minimum defining property of religion, is the belief in Spiritual Beings, which he called animism. ( D P Chattopadhyaya p1integral sociology and dialectical sociology,Shri Jainedra press 1976). Ontology. The modern sovereign state is grounded in a distinctive political theology that mobilizes the structural categories of metaphysics and theology to bolster and consolidate the higher identity of secular citizenship. Thus, the preliminary task of the student of religion must be to amass an inventory of kinds of religious phenomena. 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. This suggests that the works of these thinkers cut across the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. Required fields are marked *. 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. Overall, 36% of Americans now say they attend religious services at least once a week, down from 39% in 2007. June 03, 2016. 1 Review. 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). A theory of religion may be internal or external. He is not final. For example, a religious (or spiritual) approach to cancer treatment can be more effective than a secular approach (Croucher & Harris, 2012), religious attendance promotes healthier living, and people with HIV/AIDS often turn to religion for comfort as well. develop an informed understanding of the diversity of world religions. It does this by examining the dynamics of the constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013). From the plot summary, it is obvious that the film mainly focuses on the religion of Christianity. 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. Sociology in general looks at people's . 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. Even a commonly accepted definition of religion has proved difficult to establish, though not for lack of trying. Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? Morgan, Sue. 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. Egalitarian theorists of religious freedom, from this perspective, are right to seek to identify the normative grounds on which certain beliefs and practices call for state protection (or state restraint, in the case of non-establishment). Besides their evolutionary assumption about religion, the followers of evolutionary theory show overwhelming Eurocentric biases. London and New York, 1999. Bonferroni correction compensates for multiple . Describe a friend, acquaintance, or relative whose approach to religion is different than yours. Nor does the origin of a concept in itself discredit its uses: the concept may well have been forged in the crucible of missionary and colonial encounters, but its meanings and uses have further proliferated in non-colonial and post-colonial settings, in ways that escaped, distorted, and subverted the original discourse. Thus, some political ideologies, such as communism and fascism, have been regarded as analogous to religion. 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