In this major theoretical and methodological statement on the history of religions, Jonathan Z. Smith shows how convert apologetic agendas can dictate the course of comparative religious studies. As his example, Smith reviews four centuries of scholarship comparing early Christi…
Panentheism across the world's traditions
One of the fundamental premises of this groundbreaking collection of essays is that panentheism, despite being unlabeled until the nineteenth century, is not merely a modern Western invention. The contributors examine a number of the world's established and ancient religious tra…
Widely used as a primer, a class text, or just a provocation to critical thinking, Studying Religion clearly explains the methods and theories employed in the academic study of religion by tackling the problem of how we define religion. Written for newcomers to the field, its ch…
The World Religions Paradigm has been the subject of critique and controversy in Religious Studies for many years. This book provides a rationale for overhauling the World Religions curriculum, as well as a roadmap for doing so. It offers concise and practical introductions to c…
Discursive approaches to the study of religion have received a lot of attention recently. This book brings together leading theorists in the field who explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of the analysis of religious discourse. The volume provides an overview of curr…
"The myth of religious violence is that religion is endemic to all human cultures and eras, and is prone to absolutism, divisiveness, and irrationality. Religion must therefore be separated from "secular" phenomena like politics for the sake of peace. The secular nation-state ap…
"Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) has been described as 'the greatest and at the same time the most controversial theologian in German Protestant theology since Schleiermacher.' The controversy was epitomized by a nineteenth-century British critic who wrote that his theory "…