Critical Theory of Religion

Critical Theory of Religion
Author: Marsha Hewitt
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781451414035

This volume brings together, in an exciting and original way, the major themes of critical social theory and feminist theology. Marsha Aileen Hewitt shows how critical themes emerge in the works of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Mary Daly, and Rosemary Radford Ruether, and how their work provides a starting point for a feminist critical theory of religion.

Marx, Critical Theory, and Religion

Marx, Critical Theory, and Religion
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2006-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9047410181

This collection of essays brings together scholars who use frameworks provided by Marx and Critical Theory in analyzing religion. Its goal is to establish a critical theory of religion within sociology of religion as an alternative to rational choice.

Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education

Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education
Author: Jenny L. Small
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000067300

This text presents a new critical theory addressing religious diversity, Christian religious privilege, and Christian hegemony in the United States. It meets a growing and urgent need in our society—the need to bring together religiously diverse ways of thinking and being in the world, and eventually to transform our society through intentional pluralism. The primary goal of Critical Religious Pluralism Theory (CRPT) is to acknowledge the central roles of religious privilege, oppression, hegemony, and marginalization in maintaining inequality between Christians and non-Christians (including the nonreligious) in the United States. Following analysis of current literature on religious, secular, and spiritual identities within higher education, and in-depth discussion of critical theories on other identity elements, the text presents seven tenets of CRPT alongside seven practical guidelines for utilizing the theory to combat the very inequalities it exposes. For the first time, a critical theory will address directly the social impacts of religious diversity and its inherent benefits and complications in the United States. Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education will appeal to scholars, researchers, and graduate students in higher education, as well as critical theorists from other disciplines.

Religion, Theory, Critique

Religion, Theory, Critique
Author: Richard King
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2017-07-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231518242

Religion, Theory, Critique is an essential tool for learning about theory and method in the study of religion. Leading experts engage with contemporary and classical theories as well as non-Western cultural contexts. Unlike other collections, this anthology emphasizes the dynamic relationship between "religion" as an object of study and different methodological approaches and openly addresses the question of the manifold ways in which "religion," "secular," and "culture" are imagined within different disciplinary horizons. This volume is the first textbook which seeks to engage discussion of classical approaches with contemporary cultural and critical theories. Contributors write on the influence of the natural sciences in the study of religion; the role of European Christianity in modeling theories of religion; religious experience and the interface with cognitive science; the structure and function of religious language; the social-scientific study of religion; ritual in religion; the phenomenology of religion; critical theory and religion; embodiment and religion; the impact of colonialism and modernity; theorizing religion in terms of race and ethnicity; links among religion, nationalism, and globalization; the interplay of gender, sex, and religion; and religion and the environment. Each chapter introduces the topic, identifies key theorists and issues, and respects the pluralistic nature of the scholarship in the field. Altogether, this collection scrutinizes the explicit and implicit assumptions theorists make about religion as an object of analysis.

The Critical Theory of Religion. The Frankfurt School

The Critical Theory of Religion. The Frankfurt School
Author: Rudolf J. Siebert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 740
Release: 2016-04-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110859157

Since its founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

Contemporary Theories of Religion

Contemporary Theories of Religion
Author: Michael Stausberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-06-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134041489

Interest in theories of religion has never been greater. Scholars debate single theoretical approaches in different scholarly journals, while the ‘new atheists’ such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett criticize the whole idea of religion. For everyone eager to understand the current state of the field, Contemporary Theories of Religion surveys the neglected landscape in its totality. Michael Stausberg brings together leading scholars of the field to review and discuss seventeen contemporary theories of religion. As well as scholars of religion, it features anthropologists, archaeologists, classicists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers and sociologists. Each chapter provides students with background information on the theoretician, a presentation of the theory’s basic principles, an analysis of basic assumptions, and a review of previous critiques. Concluding with a section entitled 'Back and Forth', Stausberg compares the different theories and points to further avenues of discussion for the future.

More Than Belief

More Than Belief
Author: Manuel A. Vasquez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2020-04-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0197541682

This book challenges the traditional idea that religions can be understood primarily as texts to be interpreted, decoded, or translated. In More Than Belief, Manuel A. Vásquez argues for a new way of studying religions, one that sees them as dynamic material and historical expressions of the practices of embodied individuals who are embedded in social fields and ecological networks. He sketches the outlines of this approach through a focus on body, practices, and space. In order to highlight the centrality of these dimensions of religious experience and performance, Vásquez recovers materialist currents within religious studies that have been consistently ignored or denigrated. Drawing on state-of-the-art work in fields as diverse as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, critical theory, environmental studies, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences, Vásquez offers a groundbreaking new way of looking at religion.

Migrants in the Profane

Migrants in the Profane
Author: Peter E. Gordon
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0300255594

A beautifully written exploration of religion’s role in a secular, modern politics, by an accomplished scholar of critical theory Migrants in the Profane takes its title from an intriguing remark by Theodor W. Adorno, in which he summarized the meaning of Walter Benjamin’s image of a celebrated mechanical chess-playing Turk and its hidden religious animus: “Nothing of theological content will persist without being transformed; every content will have to put itself to the test of migrating in the realm of the secular, the profane.” In this masterful book, Peter Gordon reflects on Adorno’s statement and asks an urgent question: Can religion offer any normative resources for modern political life, or does the appeal to religious concepts stand in conflict with the idea of modern politics as a domain free from religion’s influence? In answering this question, he explores the work of three of the Frankfurt School’s most esteemed thinkers: Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor W. Adorno. His illuminating analysis offers a highly original account of the intertwined histories of religion and secular modernity.

Philosophy of Religion in the Twenty-First Century

Philosophy of Religion in the Twenty-First Century
Author: D. Phillips
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2001-10-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780333801758

This book offers the rare opportunity to assess, within a single volume, the leading schools of thought in contemporary philosophy of religion. Their exponents seek to meet objections made to their point of view and to relate it to the other schools represented. Further discussions between adherents of the different schools make it an ideal text for assessing the deep proximities and divisions which characterize contemporary philosophy of religion. The schools of thought represented are: Philosophical Theism, Reformed Epistemology, Wittgensteinianism, Postmodernism, Critical Theory and Process Thought.