Session 2

Office Hours

Have a smile:

https://youtu.be/yQq1-_ujXrM

Complicating life?

With a partner process your journal responses

• Did you come to a clear decision about the nature of the two gatherings?
• Could you identify criteria you used in making your decision?

Tools Used in the Study Religion

Religious studies is the attempt to study these things, taking homo religiosus seriously

• Textual: study sacred texts
• Historical: describe origin and development of specific religions
• Comparative: compare specific types of religious behaviors, beliefs
• Philosophical: philosophical analysis of religious language and arguments
• Intellectual & Social History: trace development of religious ideas and institutions over time

Phenomenological Method

draws upon all five tools and consists of four steps:

• Gathering Data: observe and describe religious behaviors, speech, beliefs, etc. from the point of view of religious persons and seeking to identify and understand their intentions by
• Search for Patterns: look for common patterns across different religions and religious experiences.

(cont)

• Analysis of Patterns (for their structures): look for universal meanings in patterns that transcend particular religious contexts and recognize diverse meanings (lack of universal meanings)
• Offer Generalizations about religious patterns and about religion itself. Describe the common forms and elements of religious life and may even take the next step to offer theory or general explanation of the meaning of these patterns and the nature of religion.

Brainstorm examples in your group

• 5 examples of religious phenomena
• try to make them different

This thing called Phenomenological Method

A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such a phenomenon by means of physiology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it – the element of the sacred (Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion)

Avoiding reductionism

while embracing a wide-ranging approach

• Freud understood the close relationship between the study of psychology and religion. Jung would pursue the same phenomena in a different direction
• Marx and Weber and many others have understood the close interconnection between economic (class) analysis and the phenomena of religion
• avoiding reductionism while taking seriously the intentions of the homo religiosus

"What is required is perspective" (p. 8)

A North American touring the highlands of New Guinea for a visit to one of the tribes living in the outback might well witness men decorated in bird-of-paradise feathers, nude (save for a penis sheath), covered in ashes, and dancing before a fire at the side of which are pigs bound in vines and banana leaves. His or her first reaction might well be to take some photographs in order to show “the folks back home” some of the exotic aspects of life among primitive peoples. But this picture can be reversed.

Suppose the tribesmen of the outback visit a downtown church on Sunday morning. They observe rows of oddly dressed people (what, after all, is the purpose of a necktie?), notice that some sit while others sing, listen to one person speak at length, and see still others pass plates onto which paper and metal disks are placed. What are these tribesmen to think? Where, after all, are the pigs? The fire? The sacred feathers? In both cases, the observer lacks a sense of perspective and context.

The lesson is a simple one. It is impossible to get at the intention that lies behind religious behavior unless we have a willingness to enter sympathetically into the cultural worldview of another person, at least for a moment.