“Science of Religion”, “Scientific Atheism”, “Religious Studies”: Actual Problems of the Academic Study of Religion in Russia in XX – the beginning of XXI Century

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin Antonov ◽  
◽  
Pavel Kostylev ◽  
Ksenya Kolkunova ◽  
Roman Safronov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Scientific Atheism ◽  
Academic Study

Is the Study of Religions in the Eastern Europe still behind the Iron Curtain? Response to Gregory Alles, Barbara Krawcowicz and Stefan Ragaz

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-199
Author(s):  
Tomáš Bubík
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Review Articles ◽  
Scientific Atheism ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract The text is a response to the review articles of Gregory Alles, Barbara Krawcowicz and Stefan Ragaz reviewing the book Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Open: The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe (Brill 2015). It discusses the book’s title, the relationship of religious studies to theology, and the relationship of current religious studies to scientific atheism.

Religious Studies as a Science and Educational Discipline in Ukraine

2005 ◽  
pp. 108-117
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Models Of Teaching ◽  
Teaching Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
The One ◽  
Foreign Science ◽  
Scientific Atheism

Ukrainian religious studies has recently entered the world scientific community and the educational process. Along the way, many difficulties awaited him. First, it was necessary to determine the content, structure, representation of Ukrainian religious studies, to navigate the world of foreign science of religion, in the existing teaching methods. Secondly, to outline the forms of entry of Ukrainian religious studies into the international scientific and teaching community. Acquaintance with Western science, which proved to be heterogeneous, based on various methodological approaches and methodological means, coincided with difficult internal transformations that underwent all humanitarian knowledge in Ukraine after world-view and political changes in society. In pursuit of its identity, domestic religious studies went, on the one hand, by contrasting itself with theology, and on the other, by actively distinguishing itself from so-called scientific atheism. As a result of these processes, domestic religious studies was eventually constituted as a coherent, structured science of religion, seeking to develop its own models of teaching religious studies.

Responding to the Wendy Doniger Controversy

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-39
Author(s):  
Steven Ramey
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Robust Analysis ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Academic Study

The controversy over Penguin India withdrawing Wendy Doniger's book, announced in February 2014, provides an occasion to consider the problems and possibilities within the academic study of religion. As the controversy centered on representations of what both Doniger and her opponents termed Hinduism, the problems with adjudicating contested definitions of religions or the category religions becomes apparent. Rather than assuming that we can present a normative definition of any of these terms, I argue that scholars should avoid applying these contested labels themselves and recognize instead whose application of contested labels that they use. This approach facilitates a more robust analysis of the ways these terms enter the negotiation of various conflicts and the interests and assumptions behind them, making religious studies more relevant to contemporary society.

Editor’s Corner: Critics or Caretakers?

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-39
Author(s):  
Philip Tite
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Short Piece ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Academic Study

A short essay, in responding to an online roundtable (the Religious Studies Project), explores the role of progressive ideology in the academic study of religion, specifically with a focus on debates over Russell McCutcheon's distinction between scholars functioning as cultural critics or caretakers of religious traditions. This short piece is part of the "Editor's Corner" (an occasional section of the Bulletin where the editors offer provocative musings on theoretical challenges facing the discipline).

Theory and Method and the Stakes of a Fragmented Discipline: Or, What Economics Taught Me About the Study of Religion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract As a discipline, the academic study of religion is strikingly fragmented, with little engagement or shared criteria of excellence across subfields. Although important recent developments have expanded the traditions and peoples studied as well as the methods used, the current extent of fragmentation limits the impact of this diversification and pluralization. At a moment when the global pandemic is catalyzing profound pressures on our universities and disciplines, this fragmentation makes it difficult to articulate to the public, to non-religious studies colleagues, and to students why the study of religion matters. We therefore too often fall back on platitudes. I argue for a revitalized methods and theories conversation that connects us even as it bears our arguments and disagreements about what we do and how. Courses in methods and theories in the study of religion represent the most viable basis we have for bringing the academic study of religion into the common conversation or argument that constitutes a discipline without sacrificing our pluralism.

The 7E Model of the Human Mind: Articulating a Plastic Self for the Cognitive Science of Religion

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 450-476
Author(s):  
Flavio A. Geisshuesler
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Religious Mind ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Concrete Model

AbstractThis article proposes a 7E model of the human mind, which was developed within the cognitive paradigm in religious studies and its primary expression, the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). This study draws on the philosophically most sophisticated currents in the cognitive sciences, which have come to define the human mind through a 4E model as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. Introducing Catherine Malabou’s concept of “plasticity,” the study not only confirms the insight of the 4E model of the self as a decentered system, but it also recommends two further traits of the self that have been overlooked in the cognitive sciences, namely the negativity of plasticity and the tension between giving and receiving form. Finally, the article matures these philosophical insights to develop a concrete model of the religious mind, equipping it with three further Es, namely emotional, evolved, and exoconscious.

A Challenge for the Academic Study of Religion: No Such Thing as ‘Sacred’ Cows, Right?

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 479-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blair Alan Gadsby
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Teaching Religion ◽  
Academic Study

AbstractTeaching religion in public education can benefit from the discourse in Religious Studies (rs) around the problem/problemof defining religion. This is nowhere truer than in community college (cc). However, the notion that the term ‘religion’ is of limited value (represented here asproblem) is of not-much-use inccdue to religion’s perceptible nature. It is evident to citizens that there is ‘religion’, and while not-much-clear about it by way ofrsdefinitions, it is anidentifiable and operative category. I cite the incident of Frank Roque the “9/11 Revenge Killer” to show that there is such a category in the minds of the public and utilize Stark and Bainbridge’sA Theory of Religionto focus the discourse beyond theproblemto the pedagogic and heuristic potentials of the problem for educators and ultimately citizens. The challenge forrsis to find ways for its analyses of religions to have a better effect in society. Otherwise, the categorywillbe shaped by other forces as revealed in the words of the murderer regarding his Sikh victim, “I just viewed them all as just hateful Muslims.”

Constructing Spirituality in the Cognitive Science of Religion

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-298
Author(s):  
Brad Stoddard
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Methodological Errors ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Critical Religion ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract Seven researchers in the growing field of the cognitive science of religion recently claimed to have documented the unique neural correlates of spirituality separate from and independent of religion. They claimed that spirituality is therefore a natural part of human cognition and suggested that they proved definitively that spirituality is substantively different than religion. Using insights developed by scholars associated with the critical religion approach to the academic study of religion, this article identifies a series of methodological errors that undermine the researchers’ project and that potentially impacts the larger academic study of the cognitive science of religion.

What Does the Study of Religion Study?

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Schilbrack
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Studies ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The World ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Academic Study

At the end of the twentieth century, scholars in the academic study of religion made what we might call “the reflexive turn,” in that they picked up the tools of genealogy, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies and they began in earnest to reflect critically on their own conceptual categories. Where did the very concept of “religion” come from? Whose interests are served by this apparently modern, European, and Christian way of categorizing practices? One way to think about the effect of the reflexive turn is to think of the conceptual vocabulary in religious studies as a window or lens through which scholars had previously been examining the world. What had been taken as natural and transparent now becomes itself the object of study. Richard King calls this “the Copernican turn,” that is, as he nicely puts it, a turn to focus on the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. The goal of this turn is to “denaturalize” the concept of religion (King, 1). The reflexive or Copernican turn, in my judgment, is a crucial aspect of social inquiry that scholars of religion should not ignore. But it clearly leads to the question: once one denaturalizes the concept of “religion,” what does the academic study of religion study?

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