Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

  1. The Copernican Turn in the Study of Religion

RICHARD KING

PART 1: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS/GENEALOGIES

  2. Nominalist “Judaism” and the Late-Ancient Invention of Religion

DANIEL BOYARIN

  3. Bible/Religion/Critique

WARD BLANTON AND YVONNE SHERWOOD

  4. Hegel: On Secularity and the Religion-Making Machine

ARVIND MANDAIR

  5. Friedrich Max Müller and the Science of Religion

LOURENS VAN DEN BOSCH

  6. Classic Comparative Theology and the Study of Religion

HUGH NICHOLSON

  7. Religion, Religious Studies, and Shinto in Modern Japan

JUN’ICHI ISOMAE

PART 2: THE ENLIGHTENMENT CRITIQUE OF RELIGION

  8. David Hume on Religion

RANDALL STYERS

  9. Feuerbach on Religion

JAY GELLER

10. Nietzsche: Life, Works, Reception

TYLER ROBERTS

11. Sigmund Freud on Religion

VOLNEY GAY

12. Karl Marx on Religion

TERRY REY

13. “Religion” in the Writings of the New Atheists

TINA BEATTIE

PART 3: RELIGION BEYOND THE WEST

14. Indigenous African Traditions as Models for Theorizing Religion

EDWARD P. ANTONIO

15. Zongjiao and the Category of Religion in China

YA-PEI KUO

16. Islamic Dīn as an Alternative to Western Models of “Religion”

AHMET T. KARAMUSTAFA

17. Translation

ARVIND MANDAIR

PART 4: RELIGION AS EXPERIENCE

18. The Psychology of Religion

JEREMY CARRETTE

19. William James and the Study of Religion: A Critical Reading

JEREMY CARRETTE AND DAVID LAMBERTH

20. Rudolf Otto and the Idea of the Holy

GREGORY ALLES

21. Jung on Religion

VOLNEY GAY

22. Religion and the Brain: Cognitive Science as a Basis for Theories of Religion

ILKKA PYYSIÄINEN

23. A Critical Response to Cognitivist Theories of Religion

STEVEN ENGLER AND MARK QUENTIN GARDINER

PART 5: RELIGION, LANGUAGE, AND MYTH

24. “Religion” in Anglo-American (Analytical) Philosophy of Religion

LUDGER VIEFHUES-BAILEY

25. Structuralist Linguistics and Structuralist Theories of Religion

VOLNEY GAY

26. Imagining, Manufacturing, and Theorizing Myth: An Overview of Key Theories of Myth and Religion

DANIEL DUBUISSON

PART 6: RELIGION/SOCIETY/CULTURE

27. The Origins of the Sociology of Religion: The Problem of “Religion” and “Religions” in Classical Sociology

BRYAN S. TURNER

28. Contemporary Social Theory and Religion: The Misconstrual of Religion in Theories of “Second” Modernity

SIMON SPECK

29. Classical Anthropological Theories of Religion

RANDALL STYERS

30. Defining Religion: Geertz and Asad

JON P. MITCHELL

31. Religion, Media, and Cultural Studies

RICHARD FOX

PART 7: RELIGION, RITUAL, AND ACTION

32. Classic Ritual Theories

ULRIKE BRUNOTTE

33. The Myth-Ritual Debate

ULRIKE BRUNOTTE

34. From Ritual to Ritualization

JON P. MITCHELL

35. Religion and Theories of Action

KOCKU VON STUCKRAD

PART 8: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION AND ITS CRITICS

36. Phenomenology of Religion: The Philosophical Background

CHARLES E. SCOTT

37. The Phenomenology of Religion

JAMES L. COX

38. Mircea Eliade

GREGORY ALLES

39. Critical Responses to Phenomenological Theories of Religion: What Kind of Category Is “Religion”?

WILLIAM ARNAL

40. Critical Religion: “Religion” Is Not a Stand-Alone Category

TIMOTHY FITZGERALD

PART 9: RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT

41. Post-Marxism and Religion

NELSON MALDONADO-TORRES

42. Pierre Bourdieu on Religion

TERRY REY

43. Jacques Derrida on Religion

ELLEN ARMOUR

44. Foucault and the Study of Religion

JEREMY CARRETTE

45. Contemporary Continental Philosophy and the “Return of the Religious”

RANDALL STYERS

PART 10: RELIGION, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY

46. Feminist Approaches to the Study of Religion

DARLENE JUSCHKA

47. French Feminism and Religion

MORNY JOY

48. Queer Theory Meets Critical Religion: Are We Starting to Think Yet?

NAOMI R. GOLDENBERG

PART 11: RELIGION, COLONIALITY AND RACE

49. Religion, Modernity, and Coloniality

NELSON MALDONADO-TORRES

50. Apartheid Comparative Religion in South Africa

DAVID CHIDESTER

51. Theorizing Race and Religion: Du Bois, Cox, and Fanon

WILLIAM DAVID HART

52. Black Cultural Criticism, the New Politics of Difference, and Religious Criticism

VICTOR ANDERSON

53. Theorizing Black Religious Studies: A Genealogy

VICTOR ANDERSON

PART 12: RELIGION/NATION/GLOBALIZATION

54. Religion and Violence

WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH

55. Religion and Economy

GREGORY ALLES

56. Globalization and Religion

JEREMY CARRETTE

List of Contributors

Index