Sooner or later any serious student or historian of religion will encounter Jonathan Z. Smith, he of the infamous quip — “there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study.” A curious statement indeed coming from one of the most prominent historians of religion, whose entire career and oeuvre [...]
Tags:classification schemes·costly signaling·essentializing·F. Max Muller·group level selection·Imagining Religion: From Bablyon to Jonestown·increased fertility·Jonathan Z. Smith·moral glue·multilinear evolution·religious cartography·religious classification·religious history·religious phylogeny·religious taxonomy·ritual signaling·science of religion·social cohesion·unilinear evolution
Over at HuffPo Religion, Diana Butler Bass asks: “Is Western Christianity Suffering from Spiritual Amnesia?” Her affirmative answer is simultaneously strange and naive. Most religions avoid objective histories of their origins and development for good reason: history — far more than science — corrodes religious faith.
Butler begins her article by explaining that she was teaching [...]
Tags:biblical canonization·Diana Butler Bass·early Christianity·F. Max Muller·Hans Kippenberg·History·Mormon history·philology
