Lectures on Religious Studies

Two tendencies in recent years have sought to provide explanations of religion in terms of a naturalist or eliminative reductionism, the realm of science, on the one hand, and a cultural reductionism, the realm of politics, on the other. Eliminative reductionism primarily refers to theories of cognition and evolutionary psychology along with their philosophical justification. By cultural reductionism I mean accounts that see religion only in terms of a politics of representation and structures of power. On this view, religion is a disempowering hegemony caused by a ‘false consciousness’ that has served the interests of the rich and powerful. Both kinds of reductionism share an incredulity to religious truth claims and offer explanation and critique that are rigorously externalist in their explanation of religion and thoroughly materialist in their ontological and ethical pre-commitments. On reductionist accounts, to explain religion is to locate a cause (in cognition, genetics, socio-political structures) and to explain religion is to present an external account of it, often antithetical to the internal claims of traditions. This understanding of explanation has been the predominant model in the natural sciences from Bacon through to the social sciences of our own time. Even Theology traditionally understood claimed to explain religion in this way, locating the cause of religion in God. Scientific explanations have generally been antithetical to Theology in locating causes of religion in nature and claiming superiority to theological accounts because, unlike such accounts, they are falsifiable and have predictive power. Both eliminative and cultural reductionisms offer external accounts of religion through the location of cause, the former in nature the latter in the genealogy of cultural politics, and so do not engage seriously with traditions’ claims and concerns.

On the one hand there is a critique of religion that sees religion in terms of propositions about the nature of the world. On the other there is a reaction to such claims by the rational defence of religion. But both positions fail to understand the true nature and function of religions as action and responses to life, as ways of life and kinds of action that provide frameworks for living and dying, especially in the context of late modernity and what Richard Roberts has called ‘the reconfiguring of the religious field.’ This lecture develops the idea of religion as action which is also an orientation towards meaning and transcendence; an orientation to understanding life as a journey for both individuals and communities, a journey that can have an end in a ‘liberation’ or a ‘heaven’ or some variation of an ideal of perfection. Religion is always teleological and orientated towards transcendence of the human condition; religion is predominantly soteriological. The theoretical apparatus behind some of this thinking lies in Bakhtin’s Towards a Philosophy of the Act in which he presents a distinction between the world of culture (which contains various theoretical frameworks such as philosophy, sociology, politics) and the world of life, the world in which we live our lives and die and in which acts are accomplished once and for all (and only once) as being is unrepeatable action (Being-as-event). The theory of religious action I am proposing claims that religious action is a penetration of being-as-event, that it is not restricted to the world of culture but is the only practice and discourse that attempts to penetrate, order and make sense of world of life. This world of life is a synonym for the strangeness of the world.

A religious community is defined and adapts to present conditions by the way it reads or receives its sacred texts realised in the present in a ritual space and internalised within subjectivity. The self becomes an index of tradition and subjectivity is formed through repeated liturgical acts which are enactments or embodiments of the revelation or text (broadly defined and not restricted to written document). The lecture will explore the internalisation of the text through the ritual process as the expression or realisation of the religious imperative. The realisation of the text in present speech (and it can only be realised in the present here and now) is accompanied by the internalisation of the text in subjectivity and also by the externalisation of the text in ethics, art and politics: the religious imperative comes to be articulated through ethical behaviour defined by a community, artistic expression and political institution. The ritual space within which the text is realised and brought to life for a present speech community, along with the internalisation of text and tradition, is the site of transcendence as instantiated in the history of religions. In technical terms from Linguistic Anthropology this is the subordination of the ‘indexical-I’ to the ‘I’ contained within the text, the implied reader or ‘I of discourse’ (Urban ‘The ‘I’ of Discourse’). The self of religions is formed through revelation mediated by tradition and realised in specific acts of ‘reading’ or the reception of texts. The argument will be that the central aspect of the religious self is the internalisation of the text and the alignment with the narrative of one’s own life with the tradition. This is to see life as quest for meaning through the internalisation of tradition. This internalisation is also an orientation towards the future.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on Theology and Religious Studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in Theology and the Phenomenology of Religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the Phenomenology of Religion, in order to understand the Phenomenology of Religion we need to address these fundamental ideas and to raise the basic questions of Phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence Theology, the Phenomenology of Religion, and other areas in the human sciences. The series carries on from last year and will begin again with a reading from the ‘father of phenomenology’, Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanson: Northwestern University Press, 1970).

Shifting from explicit politics to implicit cultural politics, this lecture will focus on the relation of religion to art, raising questions about how religious art expresses tradition and links in to a cosmology absent from secular art. Questions of aesthetics and function will be raised. An exhibition in London by Gilbert and George in January 2006 presented religion through a pastiche of images that showed religions to be essentially oppressive. In the context of this radical juxtaposition between secular art in late modernity and religious art, the lecture will show how the problem of aesthetic appreciation in tradition and modernity is linked to the problem of the world seen as cosmology or as stripped of cosmological understanding. Thus icons, cathedrals and images of gods function only within religious cosmology in contrast to the work of Gilbert and George which draws on an aesthetic devoid of, and antithetical to, religious cosmologies.

This series of lectures continues the series started in Michaelmas Term 2008.

This series of lectures continues the series started in Michaelmas Term 2008.

This series of lectures continues the series started in Michaelmas Term 2008.

Many of the canonical names in anthropology have been criticised for their literary style and their tendency towards evocative narrative. Here we argue that this is not a methodological weakness, but the autonomous development of a conception of understanding in terms of imaginative empathy and inter-subjectivity, which parallels hermeneutic philosophy. Religious experiences are literally recreated in the reader, forming an intimate bond between the scholar and his or her subject.

This seminar series continues. This term we will focus on reading Paul Ricoeur's Tme and Narrative. This three volume work covers a great deal and raises questions about the nature of text, action, history, fiction, memory and the very nature of existence itself. These volumes provide a critical engagement with issues in historiography and theories of the text.

This seminar series continues. This term we will focus on reading Paul Ricoeur's Tme and Narrative. This three volume work covers a great deal and raises questions about the nature of text, action, history, fiction, memory and the very nature of existence itself. These volumes provide a critical engagement with issues in historiography and theories of the text.

This seminar series continues. This term we will focus on reading Paul Ricoeur's Tme and Narrative. This three volume work covers a great deal and raises questions about the nature of text, action, history, fiction, memory and the very nature of existence itself. These volumes provide a critical engagement with issues in historiography and theories of the text.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the phenomenology of religion, in order to understand it, we need to address these fundamental ideas and raise the basic questions of phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence theology, the phenomenology of religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the phenomenology of religion, in order to understand it, we need to address these fundamental ideas and raise the basic questions of phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence theology, the phenomenology of religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the phenomenology of religion, in order to understand it, we need to address these fundamental ideas and raise the basic questions of phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence theology, the phenomenology of religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on theology and religious studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in theology and the phenomenology of religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the phenomenology of religion, in order to understand it, we need to address these fundamental ideas and raise the basic questions of phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence theology, the phenomenology of religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on Theology and Religious Studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in Theology and the Phenomenology of Religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the Phenomenology of Religion, in order to understand the Phenomenology of Religion we need to address these fundamental ideas and to raise the basic questions of Phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence Theology, the Phenomenology of Religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on Theology and Religious Studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in Theology and the Phenomenology of Religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the Phenomenology of Religion, in order to understand the Phenomenology of Religion we need to address these fundamental ideas and to raise the basic questions of Phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence Theology, the Phenomenology of Religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on Theology and Religious Studies. This seminar series seeks to engage with some of the literature and fundamental concepts of phenomenology which underlie much work in Theology and the Phenomenology of Religion. While the readings themselves are not directly about the Phenomenology of Religion, in order to understand the Phenomenology of Religion we need to address these fundamental ideas and to raise the basic questions of Phenomenology. The aim is not so much a comprehensive overview of the phenomenological movement, but rather an attempt to come to grips with key phenomenological ideas that influence Theology, the Phenomenology of Religion, and other areas in the human sciences.

This seminar will discuss the foundational ideas of the phenomenology of religion derived from Husserl, namely bracketing (the epoche), the reduction to essences, and the transcendental reduction. We will raise questions as to the viability of this approach.

The third seminar will discuss the relation of religion to politics and the place of religion in the public sphere. We will look at the idea of the critique of religion as emancipatory critique (Nietzsche, Foucault), the exclusion of women from the symbolic order (Kristeva, Irigaray) and how this is articulated in India (Manushi). 

There is a striking disparity between the prominence of religious factors in personal and collective life of so much of the population of South Asian countries and the extreme rarity of study and research explicitly on religion in the universities of those same countries. This anomalous disparity has recently become a subject of concern to a number of scholars within South Asia as well as to some elsewhere who focus their own scholarship on religion in South Asia. This lecture notes several contributory factors (European origin, cultural differences, colonial precedents, novelty and lack of teachers, teaching resources and teaching positions) but gives primary attention to fear and hostility between religio-political communalist and secularist mentalities and interests as inhibiting academic study of religion.