When I teach my anthropology of religion course the first order of business is to define and disrupt “religion” as a category. I begin by having students identify everything they consider to be “religion.” Our list grows and all the usual suspects make their appearance. After the list has been compiled, we then ask what [...]
Tags:Ake Hultkrantz·Andrew McKinnon·Buddhism·category of religion·concept of religion·definition of religion·Japan·Jason Josephson·Shinto·Wittgenstein
Over at The Atlantic, Heather Horn interviews Andrew Pettegree, who has just written a history of the book titled The Book in the Renaissance. After pondering the (bright) future of books, they discuss the profound ways in which vernacular books and a literate public forever changed religious experience:
But one mustn’t ignore that the mainstay of [...]
Tags:Andrew Pettegree·definition of religion·Heather Horn·paradigm shift·religions of the book·religious experience·religious writings·sacred texts·sacred writings·The Book in the Renaissance·the concept of religion
Any genealogy of religion must, as a threshold issue, define its primary term. There are many definitions of “religion” and some are better than others. Among Western scholars, there has been a pervasive tendency to define “religion” in terms that correspond to geographically distinct and historically recent forms of organized religion. Definitions that include references [...]
