Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface to the Second Edition: Understanding, Instead of Just Thinking -- Chapter 1 Introduction: Understanding Theories of Religion Is Better than Just Being Critical -- A New Kind of Method and Theory Book -- From Religion to the "Problems of Religion" -- But Why Did They Think That They Were Right? -- Leading Questions: On Seeing Both the Forest and the Trees -- References -- Part I The Prehistory of the Study of Religion: Responses to an Expanding World -- Chapter 2 Jean Bodin and Herbert of Cherbury: True Religion, Essential Religion, and Natural Religion -- Forming a Common Mind about Religion in Early Modern Europe -- Natural Religion, Naturism, the Religion of Nature, and Revealed Religion -- Religious Wars, the New World, and the Concept of Religion -- A Time of Problems and Creative Ferment Too -- Jean Bodin: Comparing Law Teaches Us How To Compare Religions -- The True Religion Must Be the Oldest Religion -- Natural Religion Is the Essence of Religion: Herbert of Cherbury -- Herbert's "Ambidextrous" Theory of Natural Religion -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 3 Understanding Religion Also Began with Trying to Understand the Bible -- The Bible's New Readers: Skeptics and Seekers -- "Frodo Lives!" Myth, History, and Mystery -- Biblical Criticism's New Methods -- Higher Criticism: Internal Discrepancies -- Spinoza -- Major Protestant Players: Ferdinand Christian Baur and the T�ubingen School -- The Quest for the Historical Jesus: David Friedrich Strauss -- What E.B. Tylor and Max M�uller Learned from the Biblical Critics -- References -- Further Reading -- Part II Classic Nineteenth-Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: The Quest for the Origins of Religion in History -- Chapter 4 Max M�uller, the Comparative Study of Religion, and the Search for Other Bibles in India.

Max M�uller in the Center of a Whirlwind -- The Bible and Beyond -- M�uller's Theological Liberalism and Comparison of Religions -- The Discovery of the East-West Link in Sanskrit -- Max M�uller's "Romantic" Comparativism and Western Imperialism -- The Search for Germany's National Soul in India … of All Places -- German Unity via Hindu Myth -- What Max M�uller Can Teach Us about Studying Religion -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 5 The Shock of the "Savage":: Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution, and Spirits -- Mr. Tylor and His Science -- Animism as the True Natural Religion and First Attempts at Science -- 1859 and All That: The Discovery of the European "Primitive" -- The Caves and Their Religion -- Does Religious or Cultural Evolution Make Sense? -- We Have Met the Primitives, and "They" Are "Us" -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 6 The Religion of the Bible Evolves: William Robertson Smith -- The Religion of the Bible and Its Problems -- The Great Renown and Short Heretical Life of William Robertson Smith -- Abdullah Effendi Smith of Arabia -- Robertson Smith's "Arabian Revolution" in the Study of Religion -- Robertson Smith and Higher Criticism: Wellhausen, Comparison, and Context -- Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites -- Robertson Smith Can Still Teach Us a Lot -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 7 Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer -- The Long Life and Great Renown of Sir James Frazer -- How Did We Get from "There" to "Here" … Again? -- From Magic to Religion to Technology, Not Science -- The Golden Bough: From Norseland to Nemi -- Balder, Death, and Life-Giving Mistletoe -- The Lessons Balder Taught Frazer: The Power of Comparative Method -- Murder Feeds the Life-Cycle -- A Textbook Case of Frazer's Use of Comparison -- The Hidden Paganism of Christianity Revealed.

Frazer Finds Other Christs -- The Holy Families and Other Christs -- References -- Further Reading -- Part III Classic Twentieth-Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: Defending the Inner Sanctum of Religious Experience or Storming It -- Chapter 8 Understanding How to Understand Religion: "Phenomenology of Religion" -- Religion - It's So Very Simple -- Religion: Simple? Not So Much -- What the Phenomenology of Religion Owes to the Dutch Higher Education Act 1876 -- A New Kind of Science -- Phenomenology's Liberal Christian Beginnings: Tiele and Kristensen -- William Brede Kristensen: The First "Phenomenologist" of Religion -- Do the "Insiders" Really Know Best? -- Understanding Why Most Christians Pray on Bended Knee with Folded Hands -- Rudolf Otto and the Autonomy of Religious Experience -- Anatomy of Religion: Van der Leeuw's Phenomenology -- What Can We Learn from the Phenomenology of Religion? -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 9 How Religious Experience Created Capitalism: Max Weber -- Weber and the Problems of Understanding and Explaining Capitalism -- Max Weber Turns the Tables: Religion "Explains" Things, Too -- Weber's Synthesis of Phenomenology and Causal Explanation -- Profit, More Profit, and the Rational Outlook -- How the West Got Rich: The Basic Values of Capitalism -- Traditionalism and Catholicism -- How Capitalism Killed Traditionalism -- Religion Rushes in to Justify the New Capitalist System -- For Calvin, "Calling" Overcomes All Obstacles -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 10 Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion -- The Freudian Moment -- Mentalism and the Two Psychologies -- The Behaviorist Revolution -- Freudian Psychoanalysis: Pseudo-Science and/or Therapy? -- What Lies Beneath: Freud's Idea of the Unconscious -- The Structure of the Self: Ego, Superego, and Id.

Totemism, Taboo, and Sacrifice: A Father's Burden to Bear -- Oedipal Consequences -- Mighty Mothers and Their Dying, Risen Sons -- The Psychodynamic Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 11 Bronislaw Malinowski and the "Sublime Folly" of Religion -- Anthropology's Pragmatist -- Bipolarity in Life and Letters -- A Biology of Religion: Survival Fits -- Death: It All Ends Badly -- Malinowski Thinks He Knows All This because of Freud -- The "Phenomenological" Malinowski? -- Malinowski, Sex/Gendered? -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 12 Seeing God with the Social Eye: Durkheim's Religious Sociology -- Think Group! -- Life and Times -- Durkheim's Theory Begins with Problems -- God Is Really Society, but Society Is Really Godly -- The Spirit Is Willing -- Durkheim's Sociologie Religieuse Explains Religion in General -- "Their" Secret Is Sacrifice -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 13 Mircea Eliade: Turning Back the "Worm of Doubt" -- A Real Religious Radical -- An "Antihistorian of Religion" -- Eliade as Psychologist of Religion -- The "Worm of Doubt" Turns: Eliade's Creative Hermeneutics -- Time and Space of the Creative Center -- Myth Tells Us of the Eternal Time of Origins -- Another Life: Eliade's "Ficciones" -- In and Out of Romania's "Hooliganized" History -- Swept Away -- References -- Further Reading -- Part IV Liberation and Post-Modernism: Race, Gender, Post-Colonialism, the Discourse on Power -- Chapter 14 From Modernism to Post-Modernism: Mostly Michel Foucault -- A New "New Generation" Takes on Eliade -- Foucault's Radiance: A Usable Theory of Power and Liberation -- Power, Power, Power -- Politics Is Everywhere -- Liberationism and Foucault's Discourse on Power -- Foucault, Japanese Women Shamans, and the Power of the Male Gaze.

Foucault's Liberalism Meets Post-Modern Liberationism -- Liberalism and Liberationism, Negative and Positive Liberty -- Post-Modernism after Post-Modernism: Four Key Points -- Questions -- Post-Modern Studies of Religion Focus on Race, Gender, and Post-Colonialism -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 15 Theorizing Religion with Race in Mind: Prophecy or Curiosity? -- What "Color" - Race - Is Your Theory? -- Social Research and History: The Two Cardinal Methods -- Du Bois and His Modernist Program of Social Research -- The Making and Breaking of a Scholar-Activist -- Du Bois: A Prophet of Positive Liberty -- History's Radical Legacy for Black America -- What Black Post-Modernism Owes Foucault -- Cornel West: A Black Scholar's Post-Modern Dilemma -- An Irresistible Prophetic Urge? Theory, Religion, and Race -- Black Religious Studies in a New Key -- Pinn and "Rituals of Reference": A Theory of How Black Religion Came to Be -- William D. Hart's Doubts about Pinn's Theory of Black Religion -- Raboteau's "Slave Religion" -- Note -- References -- Further Reading -- Chapter 16 Sex/Gender and Women: Feminists Theorizing Religion -- It's About Women -- Six Principles -- Why the Fuss about Sex and Gender? -- Putting Concepts of Sex and Gender to a Test: Women's Ordination -- Feminist Theory of Religion and Its Moral Bases -- Feminist Strategies for Studying Religion -- Historian Caroline Walker Bynum: What Gain from Such Pain? -- Karen Brown's Mama Lola: A Woman at the Center -- Feminists Should Resist Abstraction and Objectification -- A Mama Lola Theory of Knowledge? -- Critical Remarks -- Feminist Biblical "Higher Criticism" and Christian Origins -- Sch�ussler-Fiorenza's Critique of New Testament "Kyriarchy" -- Marija, the Great Mother Goddess, and the Two Christs -- A New Women's History: Prelude to Liberation and Prophecy? -- References.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2022. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.