The Craft of Religious Studies

by Stone, Jon R.

• ISBN13: 9780312238872
• ISBN10: 0312238878
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Unlike other humanistic disciplines, the academic study of religion must contend with a phenomenon that touches every dimension of human experience. For scholars so engaged, the study of religion often becomes a cross-cultural as well as a necessarily interdisciplinary endeavor. In this collection of original essays, Jon R. Stone has brought together the intellectual autobiographies of fourteen senior scholars-all with national or international reputations in their respective fields-each of whom reflects upon his or her own theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches to the study of religion. Taken together, these essays represent the variety of research methods and interpretive rigor mature scholars bring to the task of examining religious phenomena, religious actions, religious movements, and religious ideas.

Author Biography

Jon R. Stone currently teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism (SMP).

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Notes on the Contributors	xii
Introduction	1	(17)
Jon R. Stone
Methods in My Life	18	(18)
Ninian Smart
From Great Neck to Swift Hall: Confessions of a Reluctant Historian of Religions	36	(16)
Wendy Doniger
There Is No Religion There	52	(24)
Frits Staal
Climbing the Foothills of Understanding	76	(22)
John Hick
From History to Religion	98	(19)
Jacob Neusner
Theological Autobiography	117	(34)
James M. Robinson
Half a Life in Religious Studies: Confessions of an `Historical Historian'	151	(24)
Martin E. Marty
On Theory-Driven Methods	175	(22)
Rodney Stark
On Studying Religion	197	(16)
Andrew M. Greeley
Of Churches, Courts, and Moral Order	213	(27)
Phillip E. Hammond
Religion as Life and Text: Postmodern Re-figurations	240	(18)
Edith Wyschogrod
Retracings	258	(19)
Mark C. Taylor
Who Are You Really, and What Were You Before?: Reflections on a Thinking Life	277	(23)
Giles Gunn
The Rest Is History	300	(25)
Ivan Strenski
Index	325