Matching pivotal theorists and theories of religion alongside cutting-edge criticism from a team of leading contemporary scholars, this vibrant collection enables students to gain a balanced understanding of the diverse methods, theories, and theorists involved in the historical and methodological development of the study of religion. It can be used alongside Ivan Strenski's textbook, Thinking about Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion, to offer a complete resource for introductory students of religious studies.
Creates a useful mix of classic and contemporary responses to issues in the study of religion, ideal for those coming to the subject for the first time.
Traces the major historical and methodological development of the study of religion in the modern West, enabling students to gain a balanced understanding of the diverse methods, theories, and theorists involved.
Primary theorists featured include Cherbury, Durkheim, Eliade, Frazer, Freud, Hume, Brede Kristensen, Malinowski, Max Müller, Ninian Smart, Robertson Smith, Spinoza, Tylor, and Weber.
Contemporary contributors include Winston Davis, Sidney Hook, Robert Alun Jones, Karl Menninger, Sam Preus, Philip Rieff, Robert Segal, Georges Sorel, George Stocking, and William Dwight Whitney.
Preface viii
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1: The Quest for Natural Religion 1
Edward's Prayer 1
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury
Common Notions Concerning Religion 2
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury
from The Natural History of Religion 8
David Hume
Hume's Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion 13
Robert A. Segal
Chapter 2: The Critique of Religion Also Begins with the Critique of the Bible 23
from The History of the Origins of Christianity, Book I: Life of Jesus 23
Ernest Renan
The Historical System of Ernest Renan 27
Georges Sorel
from A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise 31
Baruch de Spinoza
The Bible and Religion in the Century of Genius, Part III: The Hidden vDialogue in Spinoza's Tractatus 34
J. Samuel Preus
Chapter 3: The Shock of the Old: Max Müller's Search for the Soul of Europe 49
Preface to Chips from a German Woodshop 49
Friedrich Max Müller
On the Philosophy of Mythology 53
Friedrich Max Müller
Forgotten Bibles 57
Friedrich Max Müller
Mušller on the Science of Religion 61
William Dwight Whitney
Chapter 4: The Shock of the 'Savage': Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution, and Spirits 65
from Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern 65
Edward Burnett Tylor
The Religion of Savages 68
Edward Burnett Tylor
from Primitive Culture 71
Edward Burnett Tylor
Edward Burnett Tylor and the Mission of Primitive Man 74
George W. Stocking, Jr.
Chapter 5: Evolution in the Religion of the Bible: William Robertson Smith 83 from Lectures on the Religion of the Semites 83
William Robertson Smith
Renan's Histoire du peuple d'Israel 88
William Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith 91
James Frazer
Chapter 6: Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer 97
from The Golden Bough 97
James Frazer
Outcast from the Islands: Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Modern Anthropology 106
George W. Stocking, Jr.
Chapter 7: From Evolution to Religious Experience: Phenomenology of Religion 115
from The Meaning of Religion: Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion 115
William Brede Kristensen
from Argonauts of the Western Pacific 119
Bronislaw Malinowski
from The Idea of the Holy 121
Rudolf Otto
Towards a Theory of the Configurations of Religion 126
Ninian Smart
Chapter 8: Religious Experience Creates the World of the Modern Economy: Max Weber 135
from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 135
Max Weber
Capitalism and Protestantism 144
Sidney Hook
Religion and Development: Weber and the East Asian Experience 146
Winston Davis
Chapter 9: Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion 155
from The Future of an Illusion 155
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud 163
Karl Menninger
The Neurosis of Civilization 166
Henry Hazlitt
from Freud: The Mind of the Moralist 168
Philip Rieff
Chapter 10: Bronislaw Malinowski, Bipolarity, and the ''Sublime Folly'' of Religion 177
from Magic, Science and Religion 177
Bronislaw Malinowski
Souvenir of Malinowsky 182
Claude Le'vi-Strauss
Anthropology and the Science of the Irrational: Malinowski's Encounter with Freudian Psychoanalysis 184
George W. Stocking, Jr.
Chapter 11: Seeing the Sacred with the Social Eye: Émile Durkheim's ''Religious Sociology'' 195
from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life 195
Émile Durkheim
Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena 199
Émile Durkheim
Contribution to Discussion ''Religious Sentiment at the Present Time'' 207
Émile Durkheim
Individualism and Intellectuals 212
Émile Durkheim
Pragmatism and Protestantism in the Development of Durkheim's Sociology of Religion 217
Robert Alun Jones
Chapter 12: Mircea Eliade: Turning the 'Worm of Doubt' 223
from Patterns in Comparative Religion 223
Mircea Eliade
Crisis and Renewal 226
Mircea Eliade
Cosmogonic Myth and ''Sacred History'' 236
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade: Apologia Pro Opere Suo 241
Bryan Rennie
Index 248
