Thinking About Religion

Matching pivotal theorists and theories of religion alongside cutting-edge criticism from a team of leading contemporary scholars, this vibrant collection enables students to gain a balanced understanding of the diverse methods, theories, and theorists involved in the historical and methodological development of the study of religion. It can be used alongside Ivan Strenski’s textbook, Thinking about Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion, to offer a complete resource for introductory students of religious studies.

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• Creates a useful mix of classic and contemporary responses to issues in the study of religion, ideal for those coming to the subject for the first time.
  
• Traces the major historical and methodological development of the study of religion in the modern West, enabling students to gain a balanced understanding of the diverse methods, theories, and theorists involved.
  
• Primary theorists featured include Cherbury, Durkheim, Eliade, Frazer, Freud, Hume, Brede Kristensen, Malinowski, Max Müller, Ninian Smart, Robertson Smith, Spinoza, Tylor, and Weber.
  
• Contemporary contributors include Winston Davis, Sidney Hook, Robert Alun Jones, Karl Menninger, Sam Preus, Philip Rieff, Robert Segal, Georges Sorel, George Stocking, and William Dwight Whitney.

Preface viii

Acknowledgments xi

Chapter 1: The Quest for Natural Religion 1

Edward’s Prayer 1
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury

Common Notions Concerning Religion 2
Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury

from The Natural History of Religion 8
David Hume

Hume’s Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion 13
Robert A. Segal

Chapter 2: The Critique of Religion Also Begins with the Critique of the Bible 23

from The History of the Origins of Christianity, Book I: Life of Jesus 23
Ernest Renan

The Historical System of Ernest Renan 27
Georges Sorel

from A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise 31
Baruch de Spinoza

The Bible and Religion in the Century of Genius, Part III: The Hidden vDialogue in Spinoza’s Tractatus 34
J. Samuel Preus

Chapter 3: The Shock of the Old: Max Müller’s Search for the Soul of Europe 49

Preface to Chips from a German Woodshop 49
Friedrich Max Müller

On the Philosophy of Mythology 53
Friedrich Max Müller

Forgotten Bibles 57
Friedrich Max Müller

Mu¨ller on the Science of Religion 61
William Dwight Whitney

Chapter 4: The Shock of the ‘Savage’: Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution, and Spirits 65

from Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern 65
Edward Burnett Tylor

The Religion of Savages 68
Edward Burnett Tylor

from Primitive Culture 71
Edward Burnett Tylor

Edward Burnett Tylor and the Mission of Primitive Man 74
George W. Stocking, Jr.

Chapter 5: Evolution in the Religion of the Bible: William Robertson Smith 83 from Lectures on the Religion of the Semites 83
William Robertson Smith

Renan’s Histoire du peuple d’Israel 88
William Robertson Smith

William Robertson Smith 91
James Frazer

Chapter 6: Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer 97

from The Golden Bough 97
James Frazer

Outcast from the Islands: Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Modern Anthropology 106
George W. Stocking, Jr.

Chapter 7: From Evolution to Religious Experience: Phenomenology of Religion 115

from The Meaning of Religion: Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion 115
William Brede Kristensen

from Argonauts of the Western Pacific 119
Bronislaw Malinowski

from The Idea of the Holy 121
Rudolf Otto

Towards a Theory of the Configurations of Religion 126
Ninian Smart

Chapter 8: Religious Experience Creates the World of the Modern Economy: Max Weber 135

from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 135
Max Weber

Capitalism and Protestantism 144
Sidney Hook

Religion and Development: Weber and the East Asian Experience 146
Winston Davis

Chapter 9: Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion 155

from The Future of an Illusion 155
Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud 163
Karl Menninger

The Neurosis of Civilization 166
Henry Hazlitt

from Freud: The Mind of the Moralist 168
Philip Rieff

Chapter 10: Bronislaw Malinowski, Bipolarity, and the ‘‘Sublime Folly’’ of Religion 177

from Magic, Science and Religion 177
Bronislaw Malinowski

Souvenir of Malinowsky 182
Claude Le´vi-Strauss

Anthropology and the Science of the Irrational: Malinowski’s Encounter with Freudian Psychoanalysis 184
George W. Stocking, Jr.

Chapter 11: Seeing the Sacred with the Social Eye: Émile Durkheim’s ‘‘Religious Sociology’’ 195

from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life 195
Émile Durkheim

Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena 199
Émile Durkheim

Contribution to Discussion ‘‘Religious Sentiment at the Present Time’’ 207
Émile Durkheim

Individualism and Intellectuals 212
Émile Durkheim

Pragmatism and Protestantism in the Development of Durkheim’s Sociology of Religion 217
Robert Alun Jones

Chapter 12: Mircea Eliade: Turning the ‘Worm of Doubt’ 223

from Patterns in Comparative Religion 223
Mircea Eliade

Crisis and Renewal 226
Mircea Eliade

Cosmogonic Myth and ‘‘Sacred History’’ 236
Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade: Apologia Pro Opere Suo 241
Bryan Rennie

Index 248

"This is an extremely useful collection of readings which in combination with Strenski's companion volume would be recommended reading to undergraduate students in religious studies requiring access to 'bitesize' pieces of the formative works in their discipline."
Theological Book Review Ivan Strenski is Holstein Family and Community Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His previous publications include Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History (1988), Religion in Relation: Method, Application, and Moral Location (1993), Durkheim and the Jews of France (1997), Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism and Social Thought (2002), Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice (2003), and The New Durkheim: Essays on Philosophy, Religious Identity and the Politics of Knowledge (2006). This concise reader creates a useful mix of classic and contemporary responses to issues in the study of religion, ideal for those coming to the subject for the first time. Pairing pivotal theorists and theories of religion alongside cutting-edge criticism from both their contemporaries and modern-day scholars, this vibrant collection enables students to gain a balanced understanding of the diverse methods, theories, and theorists involved.

The major historical and methodological developments in the study of religion in the West are traced through the works of leading theorists including Herbert of Cherbury, David Hume, Georges Sorel, Baruch de Spinoza, Friedrich Max Muller, Edward Burnet Tylor, William Robertson Smith, James George Frazer, Bronislaw Malinowski, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud and Emile Durkheim. Each of these primary figures meets their critical match in contributions from contemporary scholars designed to raise questions – both for and against – their approach and work.

Along with Ivan Strenski’s textbook, Thinking about Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion, this reader offers a complete resource for introductory students of religious studies.