Religious Studies Topics

• chris partridge
• academic enquiry
• principal religions
• christian religions
• philosophy of religion
• religions of the world
• academic discipline
• latin translation
• comparative religion
• mller
• social scientists
• true science
• oxford university
• empiricism
• dr chris
• professorships
• new territory
• twelfth century
• comparative study

Related Images

Source

Religious Studies, Religious Studies

The scholar need not be a believer. Theology stands in contrast to the philosophy of religion and religious studies in that, generally, the scholar is first and foremost a believer employing both logic and scripture as evidence. At least one theologian has noted that one can study and analyze a symphony to understand it in great detail, but it is the listening that is of greatest significance.

Peter the Venerable, also working in the twelfth century, studied Islam and made possible a Latin translation of the Qur'an.Notwithstanding the long interest in the study of religion, the academic discipline Religious Studies is relatively new. Dr. Chris Partridge notes that the "first professorships were established as recently as the final quarter of the nineteenth century." [1] In the nineteenth century, the study of religion was done through the eyes of science. Max Mller was the first Professor of Comparative Religion at Oxford University, a chair created especially for him. In his Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873) he wrote that it is "the duty of those who have devoted their life to the study of the principal religions of the world in their original documents, and who value and reverence it in whatever form it may present itself, to take possession of this new territory in the name of true science." Partridge writes that "by the second half of the twentieth century the study of religion had emerged as a prominent and important field of academic enquiry." He cites the growing distrust of the empiricism of the nineteenth century and the growing interest in non-Christian religions and spirituality coupled with convergence of the work of social scientists and that of scholars of religion as factors involved in the rise of Religious Studies.

In the forward to Approaches to the Study of Religion , Ninian Smart wrote that "in the English-speaking world studies basically dates from the 1960s, although before then there were such fields as 'the comparative study of religion', the 'history of religion', the 'sociology of religion' and so on..." In the 1980s, in both Britain and America, "the decrease in student applications and diminishing resources in the 1980s led to cut backs affecting religious studies departments." (Partridge) Later in the decade, religious studies began to pick up as a result of integrating religious studies with other disciplines and forming programs of study that mixed the discipline with more utilitarian study.

Source: Wikipedia > Religious Studies