Thinking about Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion

Abstract

Acknowledgments. Introduction: Thinking about Religion, Instead of Just Believing. Part I: The Pre-history of the Study of Religion: Responses to an Expanding World. 1 Naturalism, God-given Reason, and the Quest for Natural Religion. 2 The Critique of Religion Also Begins with Criticism of the Bible. Part II: Classic 19th Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: The Quest for the Origins of Religion in History. 3 The Shock of the Old: Max Muller's Search for the Soul of Europe. 4 The Shock of the 'Savage': Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution and Spirits. 5 Evolution in the Religion of the Bible: William Robertson Smith. 6 Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer. Part III: Classic 20th Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: Defending the Inner Sanctum of Experience or Storming It. 7 From Evolution to Experience: Phenomenology of Religion. 8 Experience Creates the World of the Modern Economy: Max Weber. 9 Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion. 10 Bronislaw Malinowski, Bipolarity and the Sublime Folly of Religion. 11 Seeing with the Social Eye: Emile Durkheim's Religious Sociology. 12 Eliade: Turning the Worm of Doubt. 13 Conclusion: Science of Religion, the Bible and Prince Charming. Index

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