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Encountering WORLD RELIGIONS A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Encountering WORLD RELIGIONS A COMPARATIVE APPROACH. Why study religion?. To be able to defeat and convert everybody else To help attain mutual understanding between different communities To learn from other religions indirectly about one’s religion An imperative for the study of culture

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Encountering WORLD RELIGIONS A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

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  1. EncounteringWORLD RELIGIONSA COMPARATIVE APPROACH

  2. Why study religion? • To be able to defeat and convert everybody else • To help attain mutual understanding between different communities • To learn from other religions indirectly about one’s religion • An imperative for the study of culture • To help solving political conflicts

  3. HOW TO STUDY RELIGION? • Apologetically (in comparison with one’s own faith) • Polemically (an attack on other religions) • Comparatively (different aspects) • Focusing on history, psychology, sociology, ethnology, etc. of religion

  4. HOW TO STUDY RELIGION?Insider / Outsider perspectives INSIDER • Religious commitment • Study of religion – a religious activity OUTSIDER • Commitment to the standards associated with the secular academy Speaking a language and studying how a language is spoken

  5. The inside perspectives Advantages: • experiential knowledge • empathetic understanding of common elements Disadvantages: • too subjective / indoctrinated • Lack of critical questions

  6. The OUTSIDER perspective: Advantages: • more objective • no previous doctrinal orinstitutionalcommitment • Critical reason • Disinterested and unemotional judgment Disadvantages: may lack the empathy or insight for genuine understanding.

  7. Reductionism • numinous presumed not proved • study religion as a purely human activity • symbols, rituals as socio-rhetorical tools for manipulation

  8. RELIGIONISMS • Polytheism • Monotheism ( Unitarianism, Trinitarianism) • Monolatrism (the worship of one greater god among many lesser gods • Henotheism(the worship of one god at a time) • Polymorphic Monotheism (a single unitary deity who takes many forms and manifests at different levels of reality) • Pantheism (God is in the whole/universe) • Panentheism (The whole is in God) • Monism • Dualism (Ahriman/Ohrmazd) • Deism

  9. Agnosticism Atheism

  10. Qualities worth having (Kessler) • Honesty(responsibility to others, to the subject matter, to ourselves) • Openness (classifications are incomplete, open mindedness, mindful of one’s biases, free from prejudices) • Careful Observing, Reading & Listening (sacred text contain different levels of meanings, sympathetic imagination) • Critical Intelligence (to evaluate by exercising careful judgment, analysis & synthesis) • Critical Tolerance (we should not suspend our disapproval at all times)

  11. THE INTERPRETIVE APPROACH aims to provide methods for developing understanding of different religious traditions that can be used by all children of school age. The interpretive approach aims to increase knowledge and understanding and it sets out neither to promote nor to undermine religious beliefs. The interpretive approach takes account of the diversitythat exists within religions and allows for the interaction of religion and culture, for change over time and for different views as to what a religion is. Includes three key concepts:representation, interpretation and reflexivity

  12. PRESENTATION INTERPRETATION Religious traditions should be presented, not as homogeneous and bounded systems, but in ways that recognisediversity within religions and the uniqueness of each member, as well as the fact that each person is subject to many influences Students should not be expected to set aside their own assumptions(as in phenomenology), but should compare their own concepts with those of others: ‘the students’ own perspective is an essential part of the learning process’. THE INTERPRETIVE APPROACH

  13. THE INTERPRETIVE APPROACH REFLEXIVITY Students should re-assess their own ways of life; they should be constructively critical of the material they study; and they should maintain an awareness of the methods they are using, reflecting on the nature of their learning. These three are elements of reflexivity.

  14. PROBLEMATIC TERMS • 3 roots of the modern study of religion: • Christian theology • Enlightenment • Colonialism • religion as a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture • no correspondence between the categories that are supposed to govern religious behavior and everyday life • particular religion as a dynamic cultural complex not a static monolithic entity • lumping people together and labeling them to make it easier for the government • more subtle erasures by scholars reinforcing sexism, racism, elitism

  15. PROBLEMATIC TERMS • no equivalent words to religion in South Asia • religion as an instrument of oppression • ideas and practices that defy classifications or threaten particular type of social order have been pushed to the margins • objectification of religion The Oxford English Dictionary notes that Gentoo used to be an Anglo-Indian term used as early as 1638 to distinguish Hindus in India from Muslims

  16. Possible solutions • to use indigenous categories • To think of a particular religion as dynamic cultural complex, not as static monolithic entity • captures the sense that religions are on the same globe, but each with a world of meaning • religious traditions - through a range of different ways of looking • Kaleidoscopic twist

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