Religious Experience: A Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion) - Hardcover

Martin, Craig; McCutcheon, Russell T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1845530977 ISBN 13: 9781845530976

Publisher: Routledge, 2012

Synopsis

Many regard religious experience as the essence of religion, arguing that narratives might be created and rituals invented but that these are always secondary to the original experience itself. However, the concept of experience has come under increasing fire from a range of critics and theorists. This Reader presents writings from both those who assume the existence and possible universality of religious experience and those who question the very rhetoric of experience . Bringing together both classic and contemporary writings, the Reader showcases differing disciplinary approaches to the study of religious experience: philosophy, literary and cultural theory, history, psychology, anthropology; feminist theory; as well as writings from within religious studies. The essays are structured into pairs, with each essay separately introduced with information on its historical and intellectual context. The ultimate aim of the Reader is to enable students to explore religious experience as rhetoric created to authorize social identities. The book will be an invaluable introduction to the key ideas and approaches for students of Religion, as well as Sociology and Anthropology.

About this title

About the Author:

Craig Martin is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, New York and Executive Secretary of the North American Association for the Study of Religion. He is editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. Russell T. McCutcheon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His areas of interest include the theories of myths and rituals, the history of the publicly funded study of religion in the US as well as the history and politics of the classification 'religion.' His major publications include Manufacutring Religion (Oxford University Press, 1997), Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2001) and The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (Routledge, 2003). Leslie Dorrough Smith is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at Avila University, Kansas City, Missouri. Much of her academic work focuses on the politics of sex, gender, and reproduction among religious conservatives. She has published several articles and book chapters on this topic as well as the scholarly portrayal of the Religious Right within the American academy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1845530977
• ISBN 13: 9781845530976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224