Religion and Conflict Case Study Series Northern Ireland ...
Ways To Study Religion
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Transcript of Ways To Study Religion
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WAYS TO STUDY RELIGION
• Religion, not discipline or methodology
• Vehicle, field of study, or text.
• Includes many disciplines, scholarly methodologies; each must answer basic questions.
• Several tools must be used in the study of religions
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Theology and Religious Studies
• Identify theology with religion, not accurate.
• Academic study, look at Scripture and scriptural texts in academic critical study.
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Theos Logos• Greek words theos, god/gods; logos, speech, inquiry, science, or
knowledge. • Not all religions are theistic. • Theology, academic discipline, academic pursuit; involves critical
analysis, does not seek to indoctrinate proselytize or convert. • As science cannot stay at level of transmitting teachings; must offer
explanatory questions at different levels. • No solution based on privileged beliefs; religious beliefs called into
question, rational discourse given priority. • Must question everything critically; scientific beliefs treated as
hypotheses, must be internally coherent and clearly criticizable.
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Fides quaerens intellectum
• Rational discourse vis-à-vis beliefs.
• Theology, what it does: “Faith seeking reason/understanding.”
• Theologians engaged in critical analysis of own religious tradition; committed and objective, willing to use different tools to critique, analyze religion, even questioning own religious beliefs.
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Tools used in the analysis of
religion • Historical-Critical
Method, approach to study of Scriptures,
• Utilizes historical research, literary analysis of texts, findings of archeology and other sciences, i.e.: anthropology.
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What does the Historical-Critical method seek to discover?
• Shed light on:Political reality of timeSocial settingEconomic situation Cultural setting
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What tools does the Historical-Critical Method use?
• Literary Criticism
• Textual Criticism
• Source Criticism
• Form Criticism
• Redaction Criticism
• Reader Response Criticism
• History
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Literary Criticism
• Sacred writings, records of events and authoritative teachings.
• Understand, interpret sacred texts.
• Understand original meaning, purpose of writing.
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Literary Criticism must look for clues that will answer:
• Is translation based on original, oldest or most authentic, reliable text?
• What was intention of author(s) of text?
• When was text written? • Where was it written? • To whom was it
addressed? • How was work received? • How was it edited,
transmitted, interpreted?
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Textual Criticism
• Must ask following question: authentic, original version of text?
• Use number of methods, procedures to answer such basic question.
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Source Criticism
• Looks at authorship of particular document.
• Is document whole composition?
• Most books, compilations from different sources; may include different genres, oral traditions, etc.
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Source Criticism seeks to answer:
• Does text have more than one author?
• Does text have more than one editor?
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Form Criticism
• Many sacred texts, oral sources. – Was this text an oral text? – Are these pre-literary forms discernable in written
texts? – What do hymns, laments, laws, wisdom and
blessings say about context or culture that produced them?
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Redaction Criticism
• Not interested in components of text,
• Looks at entire text.
• Addresses following issues: – What sources were used or rejected? – How were texts arranged? – How have they changed? – Have they been revised?
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Reader Response Criticism
• Interested in interaction between text/ reader.
• Who were original authors of texts, original readers or audience?
• Was there unintended reader?
• What are different levels of meaning in text?
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Importance of Reader Response Criticism
• Each readers brings with him/her to text:– own
experiences– own
preconceptions
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Historiography • History of religion recent
academic development: IXX Century.
• Historians select accounts, evidence available through different sources
• Based on principles of selectivity, choice of relevant data depend on kind of questions historians put to past.
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Questions historians ask:
• Who wrote what, when, why and to whom?
• What did writer borrow, and what were distinctive contributions to text?
• Must look at non-written texts, i.e., archeology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.
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What must a historian discover in history?
Historians must distinguish historical occurrences from other genres:
• Myth• Legend• Saga• Religious Traditions• Role religion, religious experiences in
individual/community?• Influence on development of culture
society and nation?
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Anthropology
• Study of human beings
• Studies social functions of religion.
• What functions particular institutions or beliefs serve in life of community?
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Functionalism
• Most widely used method by anthropologists.
• Tries to determine what functions particular institutions or beliefs serve in life of community.
• How do beliefs elicit acceptance, sanction certain behaviors?
• How do they affect society?
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Sociology • Focuses on group
social behavior. • Looks at how religion
interacts with other dimensions of social experience.
• Concerned with religious life of contemporary, developed, literate societies.
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Psychology Psychology • Looks at how religion
affects behavior of individual.
• What benefits does individual receive from practice of particular religion?
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Philosophy (The Love of Wisdom)• Examines religious
experience and belief.
• Seeks to establish logical status, meaning, truth of religious narratives and doctrines.
• Scrutinizes reason to demonstrate limits of rationality.
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Philosophy: Handmaiden of Religion
• Complimentary, at service of religion.
• Modern critical philosophy scrutinizes reason
• Demonstrate limits of rationality.
• Attempts to reveal boundaries, contradictions found in religion.
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Phenomenology • Not concerned with
exploring experience, but description itself.
• Suspension of judgment, bracketing from inquiry is necessary in all attempts to explain truth, value.
• Portrays religion in its own terms as unique expression.
• Seeks not to reduce it or explain it in other terms.
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Interpreting and Explaining Religion
• Religious experience and meaning are expressed through symbol, sounds, gestures, rituals, dramas, artifacts, architecture, and texts.
• These vehicles for religious experience require interpreter to convey mysterious meaning that they hold.
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Hermeneutics• Act of explanation,
elucidation.• Means to interpret. • Makes use of all
methods described above to accomplish task of interpretation.
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Human as Interpreters
• Reading-off meaning of sacred texts, not easy.• Hermeneutics: presuppositions of interpretation
and understanding. • Seeks necessary preconditions to make
interpretation possible, valid. • Expressions of human spirit not subject to laws,
explanations of natural sciences. T• Require understanding, not explanation. • Human meaning in its own terms to be
understood from within.
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Summary• Study of religions, secondary
activity, reconstruct, describe, explain primary expression of religious life i.e., rituals, sacred texts, institutions, beliefs, behavior.
• Use of disciplines, methods, i.e., history, linguistics, literary scholarship.
• Anthropological, sociological, psychological research, philosophical analysis, phenomenology, other sub disciplines.
• Universal and enduring character of religion/belief in human history.
• Religion embedded in behavior, history and culture of people.
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