“Religion's Engine”: Theorizing Religion and Modernity in Jon Butler's God in Gotham

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-150
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Tweed
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Religious History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Religion And Modernity ◽  
History Of

After reading Jon Butler's richly documented history of religion in Manhattan, I thought again of one of my favorite images: a 1939 watercolor by Ben Shahn called Self-Portrait among the Churchgoers, in which a photographer stands near a church on Sunday but points his camera toward the street and seems to ignore the gathering worshippers. Some U.S. historians might be relieved they do not need to learn more about those pious pedestrians, or what happens inside, but specialists in religious history might think the photographer has missed all the action. Has he? Well, in one sense, sure. Historians of religion must attend to churches and adherents, as Butler does, but, like Shahn's photographer, Butler also looks out to the wider cityscape. And that approach pays off as he asks how religion confronted “the challenge of modernity” in Manhattan, “the capital of American secularism.” More specifically, he hopes to explain why religion “didn't collapse in modernity's grasp,” as religion theorists like Max Weber and William James predicted.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Altman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
William James ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Comparative Religion ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of

The epilogue examines what the genealogy of “heathen,” “Hindoo,” and “Hindu” means for the study of American religious history and religious studies. It argues that the various projects of comparative religion that included representations of heathens, Hindoos, and Hindus must be incorporated into the larger history of religious studies. As the previous chapters have shown, definitions of heathen, Hindoo, Hindu, and Hinduism emerged from American debates about the category “religion.” The epilogue gestures toward a history that would locate religious studies within the history of religion in the United States and cites William James as a possible starting point for such a history.

The Problem of the History of Religion in America

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Keyword(s):  
American Academy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Program Committee ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
American People ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
History Of

Half a year before this paper was read before a plenary session of the American Academy of Religion (26 October 1969), the program committee had requested an essay dealing in some comprehensive way with the field of American religious history. Because I would in any case have to be thinking about the introduction to my own “religious history of the American people,” I agreed.The title was sufficiently broad; and goodness knows the problems of this subject area are sufficiently large.1 Aside from innumerable large and small questions of fact there are the countless questions of emphasis and interpretation, not to mention the problem of discerning an overarching theme. I also confess great sympathy with Max Lerner's comment on the ten years he spent on America as a Civilization (1957). “I found when I came to the end of the decade,” he said, “that a number of things I had written about America were no longer valid. The American civilization had been changing drastically right under my fingertips as I was writing about it.”2 The present-day historian's predicament is, if anything, more difficult than Lerner's in that the sixties, by contrast with the fifties, have experienced a veritable earthquake of revisionism which has profoundly altered our interpretation of the entire course of American history. By reason of its screaming moral dilemmas, moreover, the decade had an especially rude impact on long accepted views of religious history. But enough of this: let us consider the substantive questions.

scholarly journals Global Religious History as a Rhizome: Colonial Panics and Political Islam in German East Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 321-344
Author(s):  
Jörg Haustein
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Global History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
German East Africa ◽  
Academic Debate ◽  
Colonial Encounters

Abstract A Global History of Religion aims to trace connections, controversies, and contingencies in the emergence of “religion” as a global category. Its main intention is to de-center European epistemologies of religion by drawing out a more intricate global and plural genealogy. This is a very complex endeavour, however, especially when one leaves the realm of academic debate and considers the quotidian understandings of “religion” emerging in colonial encounters. Here one is often confronted by vast entanglements of practices, perceptions and politics, which need a historical methodology that foregrounds the plurality, complexity and historicity of all religious epistemes. Drawing on Deleuze’ and Guattari’s philosophical figure of the rhizome, this article sketches such an approach in a conversation between theory and historiographical practice, as it maps out a particular episode in the construction of “political Islam” in German East Africa.

scholarly journals Poblisk v religiološko misel Hjalmarja Söderberga

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (32) ◽  
pp. 357-367
Author(s):  
Nada Grošelj
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Fire Smoke ◽  
History Of ◽  
Century Thought

A Glimpse into the Religious Studies of Hjalmar Söderberg While the Swedish writer Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941) gained a worldwide reputation with his fiction, his later studies in the history of religion, with their discussions of daring reconstructions and interpretations of Biblical events, are more obscure. Of his three monographs on religious history, the paper focuses on his début, The Fire of Yahweh (Jahves eld, 1918). The key thesis about the story of Moses as proposed by Markel, the protagonist, claims that the supernatural events in the Book of Exodus which took place on and at the foot of the mountain, and were witnessed by the Israelite crowd from a distance, were in fact an elaborate and spectacular form of pre-Jewish worship in the area. According to Markel, the fire, smoke and thunder accompanying God’s appearances in the Bible were simply a spectacle for the crowd, and these ‘special effects’ might well have been produced by Moses and his successors through gunpowder. The final part of the paper outlines Söderberg’s immersion in his time and in the spiritual and intellectual shifts of the period, as well as his attitude to religion as demonstrated in some examples of his fiction. Keywords: history of religion, Swedish literature, Moses, Bible interpretation, early 20th century thought

scholarly journals Exploring similarities between the German and the Dutch ‘ethical’ traditions: Possibilities of the history of religion for a theological approach to Old Testament studies in South Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan H. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Israelite Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relevant Factors

This article shows how dialectic theology caused a loss of interest in the history of religion, which was seen as out of touch with the current world. The distinction between theology and the history of religion became increasingly vague. The article focuses on the contribution of Rainier Albertz in his two-volume Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit (History of Israelite religion in the Old Testament period), 1992. Albertz proposed that the history of religion should be restored to serve as the ‘more sensible discipline for abridging the Old Testament’. This article points out several advantages to this approach, namely a different kind of Old Testament theology, starting from current theological problems and searching through the thematic segments of Israel’s religious history and that of early Christianity for analogous insights relevant to the problems in question. This article develops the argument that Albertz’s suggestions open up possibilities for establishing a vibrant theological environment in South Africa, where theologians from a diverse society can start from different perspectives on current problems, consider the Bible as part of a uniquely defined set of relevant factors and present a kaleidoscope of cross-balancing ‘African’ theological perspectives. The aim of this approach is to enhance the possibilities of Albertz’s suggestions by relating them, in context, to insights from ethical theology in the hope of reviving the debate regarding repositioning the history of religion in a different kind of theological approach. This debate is long in coming: it may already have lost close to 20 years in deserved attention.

The Immigrants and Their Gods: A New Perspective in American Religious History

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay P. Dolan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Church History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
New Perspective

Twenty years ago Jerald Brauer wrote an essay on the writing of American church history entitled, “Changing Perspectives on Religion in America.” In this essay he noted that “change in perspective marks the writing of the history of religion in America.” After discussing the work of Robert Baird and William Warren Sweet, the two historians whose perspectives most influenced the writing of American church history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, Brauer then directed his attention to a third and new perspective. This new perspective had developed in the post-World War II era and was the result of the work of Sidney E. Mead, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Winthrop S. Hudson, and others. Brauer described the new perspective by pointing out how it differed from the work of Sweet. It was clear to Brauer, however, that no one historian or school of historians had yet emerged whose perspective was able to dominate the landscape in the manner that Baird and Sweet had. There really was no new single perspective, but a variety of approaches and interpretations. In other words, in the late 1960s the discipline of American church history was in a state of flux, and “a number of young historians” were, in Brauer's words, “anxious to develop a new perspective through which to view the development and nature of Christianity in America.”

The Problem of the History of Religion in America

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (S1) ◽  
pp. 127-138
Author(s):  
Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Keyword(s):  
American Academy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Program Committee ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
American People ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
History Of

Half a year before this paper was read before a plenary session of the American Academy of Religion (26 October 1969), the program committee had requested an essay dealing in some comprehensive way with the field of American religious history. Because I would in any case have to be thinking about the introduction to my own “religious history of the American people,” I agreed. The title was sufficiently broad; and goodness knows the problems of this subject area are sufficiently large. Aside from innumerable large and small questions of fact there are the countless questions of emphasis and interpretation, not to mention the problem of discerning an overarching theme. I also confess great sympathy with Max Lerner's comment on the ten years he spent onAmerica as a Civilization(1957). “I found when I came to the end of the decade,” he said, “that a number of things I had written about America were no longer valid. The American civilization had been changing drastically right under my fingertips as I was writing about it.” The present-day historian's predicament is, if anything, more difficult than Lerner's in that the sixties, by contrast with the fifties, have experienced a veritable earthquake of revisionism which has profoundly altered our interpretation of the entire course of American history. By reason of its screaming moral dilemmas, moreover, the decade had an especially rude impact on long accepted views of religious history. But enough of this: let us consider the substantive questions.

In saecula saeculorum

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 319-343
Author(s):  
Fred van Lieburg
Keyword(s):  
Religious History ◽  
Church History ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
Scholarly Networks ◽  
History Department

AbstractThis article offers a personal perspective on religious history after the institutionalisation of this field in the History Department at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2015. In essence and method, religious history is like history of religion(s). In German and Dutch, one can speak of Religionsgeschichte or religiegeschiedenis/godsdienstgeschiedenis. Different terms are in use in English and French, reflecting the different traditions in the disciplines of theology and history. History of religion(s)/histoire des religions is commonly associated with comparative studies of (non-Christian) religions, while religious history/histoire religieuse developed as a specialisation within general history (mostly concerned with Christianity and therefore close to what is known as church history or ecclesiastical history). While understanding religious history as general history with a focus on the religious factor in cultural, social, and political realities, various research traditions should be converged and integrated by means of conceptual exchange, cross-disciplinary approaches, and linked scholarly networks. Given the interest in global dimensions and long-term developments, computer-assisted research of digitalised sources is recommended for doing religious history today.

Redescribing Graeco-Roman Antiquity: on Religion and History of Religion

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 211-238
Author(s):  
Gerhard van den Heever
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
Mystery Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Antiquity

AbstractIn introducing the theme ‘Redescribing Graeco-Roman Antiquity’ this article shows how conventional claims to uniqueness of early Judaism and early Christianity misconstrue religious history. In fact, the conventional portrayal of early Judaism, early Christianity, and Graeco-Roman religions (especially, in this case, the mystery religions) is in itself a social discourse. This is set in the context of the Graeco-Roman constructions of deity, which is demonstrated to be in themselves, too, social discourses, more specifically, an imperialising discourse. Attention is paid to the discursivity of the phenomena under consideration and it is argued that history of religion is both a study of the construction of the historical ‘object’ as well as the construction of the construction of the historical ‘object’.

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