Sociologists are primarily interested in examining the effects of religion on society. First of all we have to say that both, Smart and Aurobindo have not defined religion from objective point of view but rather to determine religion in terms of its own value. Personal experience is crucial to any understanding of religion .On this particular account Aurobindo discovers the relation or union, he favours, what he identifies as spiritual psychology and integral methods, but for both he confirms that the objective is to be understood and interpreted in terms of subjective. J.F. The stage from man to super being is the next which depends from the approach of the achievement on the evolution on earth. Lesson Transcript. (Peter Connolly,pp1-2Approche to the Study of Religion,Biddles L.T.D.) Critics have pointed out thatby analogizing religion with individual conscience or conceptions of the goodliberalism reveals its Protestant, individualistic bias, and is unable to capture the fullness of the religious experience. Not surprisingly perhaps, the work of those scholars who have most influenced the critical religion school, such as Asad and Mahmood, explicitly aims to provide a thick anthropological description of the complexity and diversity of religious experienceit brings out, for example, the distinctive modes of Muslim religious subjectivity. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Approaches to ReligionSpring 2010REL 111. Besides their evolutionary assumption about religion, the followers of evolutionary theory show overwhelming Eurocentric biases. 10. the myths of a religion. Accordingly, Calvinists believed in predestination, the view that God has already decided on who will enter heaven or not. The Christian theologian, for example, may see a particular historical process as providential. To him, sacred meant extraordinarysomething that inspired wonder and that seemed connected to the concept of "the divine.". (Ninian Smart,pp10-12,Dimension of the sacred an anatomy of the worlds beliefs ,Harper Collins Publisher 1196) We see from Smarts classifactory account, Smarts perspective in sustaining a phenomenological perception to the methodology of approach to the study, is far different from the approach that Sri Aurobindo use. In this lesson, we will discuss the difference between the scientific and the religious approach and will look at some examples of each. (Note that no assumption is made about the actual disciplinary location of scholars. Aurobindo did not just stick to an immanental experience of a divine being but that there must be transcendence within the individuals life which is seen in Auroville with a lived approach to ones faith rather like that which is common within Charismatic and Evangelical Churches. Secularism and freedom of religion, in liberal thought, are connected to moral values such as individual autonomy, moral self-determination, freedom of conscience as well as more political ideals such as non-theocratic constitutional democracy, separation of church and state, and non-establishment of the dominant religion. These studies suggest the significance of religion in health communication and in our . Yet the strategy of disaggregating religion has a further, more portentous implication for normative political theory. During his time, Marx observed that the capitalists, in their pursuit of profits, eventually exploited the workers. Christian neo-orthodoxy can be placed as a middle position between traditional orthodoxy and liberalism. These questions within Smarts Classifactory account would help to define a religion. Others have no clear vision upon their religious identity and are searching possible traditions, ready to meet their spiritual exploration .So they start looking for different approaches to their study ,bringing along different opinions and whatever the process and methodology is, will bring them information from which eventually they will find answers or give opinion. Like most abstract concepts, the concept of religion is a construction projected onto the world, but one consequence of this large-scale projection may well be that our world has genuinely come to exhibit it. Methodologies provide a lense of analysis from which to view the field of religous studies. b.) The most influential proponent of comparative religion in the nineteenth century was Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900). For critics, this is visible in three different ways. Fall 2005. He explains that such experience definitely will change positions on previous views regarding religious tradition. Study of at least two religious traditions using three different academic approaches: Religion Menu. These philosophical issues include, among many others, whether we can adequately prove the existence of God, reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a God who is wholly good and all-powerful, reconcile Gods omniscience (the power to know everything) and foreknowledge (the power to know future events) with human freedom, explain the nature of miracles, determine the meaningfulness of religious language (how religious linguistic expressions acquire their meanings), and many others. Department of Religion Pearson 211 Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397 Email: religion@swarthmore.edu Phone: (610) 328-8045 Fax: (610) 328-7687 In the literature, lived religion is treated variously as a term, a concept, an approach, and a field of studyor all of these. 3 Phenomenological. Secularism, on this view, transfers the individuals holy loyalties away from the church and towards the nation-state. We're here to answer any questions you have about our services. Registered office: Creative Tower, Fujairah, PO Box 4422, UAE. For example, a religious (or spiritual) approach to cancer treatment can be more effective than a secular approach (Croucher & Harris, 2012), religious attendance promotes healthier living, and people with HIV/AIDS often turn to religion for comfort as well. The etymological meaning of the word theologybased on its Greek origin, namely theo, which means God, and logos which means discourse or study,is study of God. Theology, however, is not just limited to the study of the nature ofGod, for it also studies in a systematic way the main doctrines of a particular religion. The modern sovereign state is grounded in a distinctive political theology that mobilizes the structural categories of metaphysics and theology to bolster and consolidate the higher identity of secular citizenship. Given this, we, however, also use other approaches especially comparative religion and philosophy of religionwhich we will discuss next. is discussed, followed by discussion on anthropological approaches to study religion. Sociology is one such approach that this essay will be looking at through its founding fathers Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx. How can we best identify and protect the normative values which historically have underpinned freedom of religion, non-establishment and the like? Sensory experience. The field of religion/worldview is a broadly defined area of study. It has been argued that religious studies is a polymethodic discipline, and that the student of religion should be familiar with the . Influential sociological theories of religion came from Karl Marx (1818-1893), Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1920). 2.Religious studies has a bigger scope because it analyzes the different world religions. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Describe a friend, acquaintance, or relative whose approach to religion is different than yours. A theory of religion may be internal or external. Such struggles were political through and through, and it is impossible to discern any common core or essence to all the world religions, as W. C. Smith pointed out in 1962. Among the many faiths represented here are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Let me get back to the starting point of our inquiry: Is religion a valid category of scholarly research? The law does not describe and regulate the full experience of marriage: the fact that, in law, marriage is a contract does not mean that marriage is, or should be experienced as, a contract. These different approaches disagree about the essence of religion, but all three camps operate within a shared account of the human. For egalitarian theorists of religious freedom (as I call them), there is nothing special about religion as such. From the belief in human souls grew the belief in other spirits, like those that inhabit nature and those venerated as gods. By criticizing religion, I mean not the critique of the beliefs or practices of self-described religious individuals or groups but rather the critique of the concept of religion as a scholarly category. If religion is a western concept that has been used to shore up the authority of the colonial and sovereign state, through shifting, arbitrary demarcations between religion tradition, culture, reason, and the nation, then scholars should be wary of treating it as a stable, coherent object of academic study. So he is proposing a mystical goal and from his yogic teachings he guides,shows and achieves that. Most of the major thinkers recognized in this area are also those recognized in the sociology of religion like Durkheim and Weber. Required fields are marked *. At this juncture, let us x-ray some of the approaches in studying religion scientifically. We've received widespread press coverage since 2003, Your UKEssays purchase is secure and we're rated 4.4/5 on reviews.co.uk. The worry here is the hard-won liberal right to religious freedom will not elicit much respect if the existence of religion itself is radically questioned. Each of these approaches can be applied to the study of religious diversity. The book is a vast collection of rituals, myths, and religions organized by patterns and themes, which made extensive use of sources from primitive and folk cultures (Paden 2005, 213). The method used was to compare the subjective experience with the intent of shaping the arrangement of religion itself from within the structure. Here I focus on two objectionswhich, for ease of presentation, I call the anthropological and the normative objection. The first is that religion is (as Daniel Dubuisson once wrote) the Wests most characteristic concept, around which it has established and developed its identity. There is a deep and significant continuity between the Christian defense of the true religion and the nineteenth-century invention of world religions. The universalism of the concept masked an internally hierarchical classificatory scheme, which, as Tomoko Mazuzawa has shown, was crafted within the crucible of the missionary and colonial encounter. The disaggregated approach does not claim that it captures the fullness of the lived, anthropological reality of religion. It looks at the percentage of each country's population that belongs to eight major religious groups, as of 2010. This research focuses on the legal basis for anti-corruption measures in Indonesia and Malaysia and touches upon aspects of enforcement. Human biomonitoring (HBM) approaches can provide inter alia information on the chemicals that are in our body at one point in time. For our purposes, we shall . Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. , or relative whose approach to religion is different than yours Emile Durkheim, Weber! 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