The invention of religions / Daniel Dubuisson ; translation by Martha Cunningham.

For nearly thirty years, a scientific revolution has taken place in the religious studies departments of several North American and British universities--and the results are considerable, obliging us to envisage new ways of conceiving of this academic field. While the History of Religions tended to...

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Bibliographic Details
Uniform Title:Invention des religions. English
Main Author: Dubuisson, Daniel, 1950- (Author)
Other Authors: Cunningham, Martha (Translator)
Language:English
Language of the Original:
French
Published: Sheffield, UK ; Bristol, CT : Equinox Publishing Ltd., [2019]
Edition:First English edition.
Subjects:
Religion > Methodology.
Religion > History.
Religions.
Religion.
History.
Genre:
History.
Physical Description:viii, 200 pages ; 24 cm
Format: Book
Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. The history of religions: a western science : Christian culture and the history of religions : Links: numerous and diffuse ; The invention of "Religio" ; The intellectual hegemony of Christianity ; Power, Church, and religion
  • Two major paradigms : Idealism versus materialism ; Religious versus profane
  • A Nineteenth-Century science : The discovery of the Indo-Europeans ; Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer ; The Founding Fathers ; The classification of religions ; Break? Or merely evolution?
  • Part 2. Autopsy of a critical paradigm : Religious studies in the United States : Notable statistics ; The American Academy of Religion and the North American Association for the Study of Religion ; The influence of French theory
  • The targets : The phenomenology of religion ; "The Holy" according to Rudolf Otto ; The great Eliadean themes
  • Major criticisms : The end of the essences ; Readers and textbooks
  • Major contributions : Colonialism and cultural imperialism : "The civilizing work of the West" ; "Cognitive Imperialism" and "Epistemic violence" ; The invention of religions : The invention of Oriental religions: Hinduism and Shinto ; World religions and universal religions. Part 3. What to do with 'religions'? : What future for critical studies? : A question and some options ; Comparativism
  • Conclusion.