Description: What is religion? Can it be defined at all? Or is it too easily defined in far too many ways so as to make a "religion" a drifting signifier or whatever one's pleasure is? Does the study of religion require special, perhaps religious, tools of analysis and explanation? What is the difference between a knowledge of religion derived from practicing it and a knowledge about religion derived from nonreligious modes of inquiry? Sooner or later, any serious student of religion must face these questionsif religious practices are to be investigated in the light of the terms and aims of the social and human sciences in the modern university."The Guide to the Study of Religion" provides a map of the key concepts and thought-structures for imagining and studying religion as a class of everyday social practices that lend themselves to no more or less difficult explanation than any other class of social phenomena.
Brief description: Willi Braun is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Review Quotes: ""This is the type of book that I could imagine using at the beginning of a world religions course in order to help students understand how scholars seek to understand religions. Or it might be used in course on research and methods. It is not a theology text per se, but it helps those of us who are theologians understand both our discipline and the location of our discipline in relation to the larger field of religious studies. I recommend it heartily!" -- David C. Ratke, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Currents in Theology and Mission" --David C. Ratke, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Currents in Theology and Mission