Religious Inventions: Four Essays

by Max Charlesworth

• ISBN13: 9780521590761
• ISBN10: 0521590760
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-06-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Many scholars assume that all genuine religions are basically similar and that it is possible to define the sphere of religion in terms of the 'sacred' or the 'holy'. In his latest book, Max Charlesworth argues that we must take the diversity of religions as a primary fact. Any religion is an active response to a revelation of the divine, and human beings receive these revelations, interpret them and develop them in a variety of ways. To illustrate his thesis, he considers a number of examples of the 'invention' of religion, ranging from Australian Aboriginal religions to the Rhineland mystical movement associated with Meister Eckhart in the early fourteenth century, from the seventeenth-century sects like the Muggletonians, to Roman Catholic attempts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to construct a theological account of doctrinal development and also to formulate a Christian ethic.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(22)
1 The diversity of revelations	23	(28)
2 The invention of Australian Aboriginal religions	51	(30)
3 Universal and local elements in religion	81	(24)
4 The making of a Christian ethics	105	(34)
Conclusion	139	(16)
Index	155