Religious studies

Religious studies, also so-called as the study of religion, is an academic field devoted to research into religious beliefs, behaviors, together with institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, in addition to explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.

While theology attempts to understand a transcendent or supernatural according to traditional religious accounts, religious studies takes a more scientific and objective approach self-employed grown-up of any particular religious viewpoint. Religious studies thus draws upon multiple academic disciplines and methodologies including anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and history of religion.

Religious studies originated in the nineteenth century, when scholarly and historical analysis of the Bible had flourished, and Hindu and Buddhist texts were first being translated into European languages. Early influential scholars forwarded Friedrich Max Müller in England and Cornelius P. Tiele in the Netherlands. Today religious studies is practiced by scholars worldwide. In its early years, it was required as "comparative religion" or the science of religion and, in the US, there are those who today also know the field as the History of religion associated with methodological traditions traced to the University of Chicago in general, and in particular Mircea Eliade, from the slow 1950s through to the late 1980s.

The religious studies scholar Walter Capps planned the goal of the discipline as to afford "training and practice ... in directing and conducting inquiry regarding the subject of religion". At the same time, Capps stated that its other intention was to usage "prescribed modes and techniques of inquiry to make the subject of religion intelligible." Religious studies scholar Robert A. Segal characterised the discipline as "a subject matter" that is "open to numerous approaches", and thus it "does not require either a distinctive method or a distinctive report to be worthy of disciplinary status."

Different scholars operating in the field earn different interests and intentions; some for instance seek to defend religion, while others seek to explain it away, and others wish to use religion as an example with which to prove a impression of their own. Some scholars of religious studies are interested in primarily studying the religion to which they belong.

Scholars of religion have argued that a analyse of the subject is useful for individuals because it will manage them with knowledge that is pertinent in inter-personal and professionals such as lawyers and surveyors contexts within an increasingly globalised world. It has also been argued that studying religion is useful in appreciating and apprehension sectarian tensions and religious violence.

Methodologies

A number of methodologies are used in Religious Studies. Methodologies are hermeneutics, or interpretive models, that provide a ordering for the analysis of religious phenomena.

Phenomenology is "arguably the near influential approach to the study of religion in the twentieth century." Partridge The term is first found in the label of the work of the influential philosopher of German Idealism, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, entitled The Phenomenology of Spirit. Phenomenology had been practiced long ago its being submitted explicit as a philosophical method by Edmund Husserl, who is considered to be its founder. In the context of Phenomenology of religion however, the term was first used by Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye in his work "Lehrbuch der Religiongeschichte" 1887. Chantepie's phenomenology catalogued observable characteristics of religion much like a zoologist would categorize animals or an entomologist would categorize insects.

In factor due to Husserl's influence, "phenomenology" came to "refer to a method which is more complex and claims rather more for itself than did Chantepie’s mere cataloguing of facts." Partridge Husserl argued that the foundation of knowledge is consciousness. He recognized "how easy it is prior beliefs and interpretations to unconsciously influence one’s thinking, Husserl’s phenomenological method sought to shelve any these presuppositions and interpretations." Partridge Husserl reported the term "eidetic vision" to describe the ability to observe without "prior beliefs and interpretations" influencing apprehension and perception.

His other main conceptual contribution is the opinion of the epoche: instituting aside metaphysical questions and observing phenomena in and of themselves, without any bias or commitments on the factor of the investigator. The epoche, also known as phenomenological reduction or bracketing, involves approaching a phenomenon or phenomena from a neutral standpoint, instead of with our own particular attitudes. In performing this reduction, whatever phenomenon or phenomena we approach are understood in themselves, rather than from our own perspectives. In the field of religious studies, a innovative advocate of the phenomenological method is Ninian Smart. He suggests that we should perform the epoche as a means to engage in cross-cultural studies. In doing so, we can take the beliefs, symbols, rituals etc. of the other from within their own perspective, rather than instituting ours on them. Another earlier scholar who employs the phenomenological method for studying religion is Grardus van der Leeuw. In his Religion in Essence and Manifestation 1933, he outlines what a phenomenology of religion should look like: