Religious Studies and the Values of Critical Humanism

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-302
Author(s):  
Richard B. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Critical Reasoning ◽  
Cultural Fluency

This chapter proposes that a proper telos for the study of religion is Critical Humanism. Drawing on Aristotle and Charles Taylor, it explains how Critical Humanism provides a theoretical framework for studying religion and describes its mobile, liberal, dialogical, and inclusive aspects. Building on the ideas of Felski, Walzer, Rorty, and the environmental humanities, it notes how Critical Humanism places a premium on expanding the moral imagination and examines the connections between that idea and humanistic scholarship. That discussion leads into an account of four values to which the study of religion can be connected: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. The chapter then describes four works in the study of religion that exemplify these values. Lastly, it summarizes the chapter’s arguments in response to the challenges posed by Weber’s view of science and Welch’s reckoning with the field’s “identity crisis” as described in chapters 1 and 2.

Why Study Religion?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Criticism ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Critical Reasoning ◽  
Alternative Framework ◽  
Cultural Fluency ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
The Way ◽  
Regime Of Truth

This book asks, can the study of religion be justified? It poses this question on the view that scholarship in religion, especially work in “theory and method,” is preoccupied with matters of methodological procedure and is thus inarticulate about the goals that can justify the study of religion and motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, it insists, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. The book identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, each of which it critically examines as symptomatic of this crisis, on the way toward offering an alternative framework for thinking about purposes for studying religion. Shadowing these methodologies is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that privileges value-neutrality. This ideal poses obstacles to making justificatory claims on behalf of studying religion and fortifies a repressive conscience about thinking normatively within the field’s regime of truth. After making these points, the book describes an alternative framework, Critical Humanism, especially how it theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship and offers a basis for thinking about the ethics of religious studies as held together by four values: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, the book argues, the study of religion can imagine itself as a valuable and desirable enterprise so that scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and avow the values of studying religion.

scholarly journals Cultural Diversity and Religious Reflexivity in an Intercultural Chilean Parish

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Felipe Orellana
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Religious Conviction ◽  
Peter Berger ◽  
Personal Belief ◽  
The Difference

This research aims to analyze cultural diversity and its relationship with the personal belief in an Immigrant Parish. The discussion is framed within the topic of intercultural churches and parishes, although in a setting that has not been researched (Santiago, Chile). The research was carried out in the Latin-American Parish placed in Providencia, Santiago, and a qualitative framework was used to obtain and analyze the data. Cultural diversity is understood concerning religious reflexivity and under the idea that pluralism leads to a weakening of religious conviction, as Peter Berger argued. The theoretical framework makes the difference between the vision of Berger on cultural pluralism (pluralism inter-religion) and the viewpoint by Charles Taylor (pluralism intra-religion). On the contrary to Berger, the findings of this research showed that cultural diversity and pluralism are elements that produce a strengthening of individual beliefs.

Cultural Understandings of “Religion”: The Hermeneutical Context of Teaching Religious Studies in North America

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Murphy
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Communicative Context ◽  
Comparative Manner

AbstractWhen students come into the classroom, they have a prefigured, albeit deeply implicit, notion of what “religion” is and what it is not. They see religion as private, inner, and personal, as distinct from “politics” and “economics.” This prefigured conception of religion is, in this author's view, one of the principle obstacles to teaching Religious Studies in an empirical, cross-cultural, comparative manner. Given the overall structure of the cultural configuration within which students think about and live out “religion,” i.e., that it is private, utilitarian, and simply an obvious given to them, how can we introduce theory into the Religious Studies classroom? The answer given here is that if we use language-based theoretical models of culture such as structuralism and hermeneutics, we do better, in the main, in applying that theory to the communicative context of the classroom than trying to teach theory directly to our undergraduate students. This paper offers an analysis, using such language-based theories, of those cultural conditions which our students bring into the classroom and which shape their “native” understanding of the category “religion,” as well as some suggestions as to how to cope with it in order to teach Religious Studies more effectively.

The Space of Freedom in a Context of War, Exile and Endless Instability: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Autobiographical Narratives on Catalan Exile

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narcís Iglésias-Franch
Keyword(s):  
Historical Data ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Close Link ◽  
The Way

Abstract In the recent numerous publications on the autobiographies of Catalan writers who went into exile in 1939, themes such as memory, identity crisis or travel have been studied in depth. In this article, I propose a sociolinguistic interpretation of a series of autobiographical works by exiled authors such as Xavier Benguerel, Lluís Ferran de Pol and Antoni Rovira i Virgili. According to the theoretical framework of sociolinguistic studies, autobiographical narratives can be analysed using three different approaches: first, the way authors narrate how ‘things’ are or were; second, how ‘things’ or events were experienced; and, finally, the ways in which ‘things’ or events are narrated. Language is not only historical data or an individual experience which authors narrate in their autobiographical narratives. This sociolinguistic approach to the autobiographical narratives of Catalan exiles shows the close link between language and identity, and between language and morality.

Feminist studies in religion and a radical democratic ethos 1

1995 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-144
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
South African ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
South African Context ◽  
The South ◽  
African Context ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Institutional Location

AbstractFeminist studies in religion contribute to the fashioning of a radical democratic political culture and the creation of an egalitarian politics of meaning. In the South African context feminist studies are important elements in the emergence of a democratic and just society since they provide a theoretical framework and intellectual space for transforming kyriarchal knowledges and deeply inculcated values of oppression. Several issues are addressed, namely the nature of feminist religious studies, feminist religious studies as a knowledge producing discourse, and the institutional location of feminist studies in religion.

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