Field? Discipline? What is the Study of Religion Anyway?

Summary Part 1:

“The academic study of religion is fundamentally an anthropological enterprise. That is, it is primarily concerned with studying people (anthropos is an ancient Greek term meaning “human being”; logos means “word” or a “rational, systematic discourse”), their beliefs, behaviors, and institutions, rather than assessing “the truth” or “truths” of their various beliefs or behaviors.”
Dr. Russell T. McCutcheon

For this section of the summaries, review the video and article listed in the syllabus for this week. Then do a Google search for one of the following religions: Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomble, Santo Daime, or Wicca, and attach “anthropolgy” to your chosen religion. Then, once you enter the information into Google, you will go to the NEWS tab for your results. Find a short news item and write a 150 word opinion piece on how anthropology is used to study the religion of your choice.

Think about the following statement and incorporate its ideas into your writing:

The anthropological study of religion attends to religious life via the study of everyday practices. Rather than understanding religion as a set of beliefs, anthropologists examine the ways that practices and belief are constitutive of each other via a broad spectrum of representations, embodiments and ethical and social practices. These everyday practices are constituted by and constituting of many aspects of social life including gender, desire, performance, politics and power. Anthropologists thus recognize that religious life is a thoroughly social practice, and yet identifiable as transformative and sometimes mysterious subject of investigation.

People living in the West tend to have a clear idea of what religion should look like: it tends to take place in a building set aside for the purpose (a church, synagogue, mosque, temple etc.), revolves around appeals to a higher, all-powerful deity and involves the articulation of beliefs (often set down in texts) to which the general population may or may not subscribe. Anthropologists have studied such religions, but they have also examined contexts where religious practice looks very different. In many cultures and societies, the idea of a single God may not be present, and the notion of reading a sacred book like the Koran or the Bible would seem very strange, not least because writing and reading may not play any part in people’s lives. Even the western notion of ‘belief’ does not make much sense in contexts where ideas about gods and spirits are taken for granted and are not challenged by other faiths or the conclusions of the natural sciences.

Anthropologists of religion are not concerned with discovering the truth or falsehood of religion. They are more interested in how religious ideas express a people’s cosmology, i.e. notions of how the universe is organized and the role of humans within the world. Many study rituals which incorporate symbols and note how these often help to bring communities together in times of crisis or special points in the calendar. The actions of religious specialists, whether these are priests, prophets, shamans or spirit mediums are also examined. In many societies, such specialists have important political and economic as well as religious roles to play.

EXTRA CREDIT: Per our Zoom today, 30 June 2020, defining the following list and writing 200 words about religion and tolerance will earn you an extra 15 points within this assignment. Also, integrate any of the terms into your extra credit writing that you find are useful to your argument:

Anthropology
Communitas
Fieldwork
Participant observation
Observant participation
Emic
Etic
Oral history
Autoethnography
Liminality
Gatekeeper
Interlocutor
Field notes
Archival research
Ethnography
Acculturation
Scapegoat
Diffusion
Indigenous
Random sample

Layout and Design:

Writing 200 words total for Summary Part 1, and complying fully with the following criteria makes for a successful assignment:

• Typed in Times New Roman in a 12pt font
• double-spaced
• numbered pages
• appropriate heading (name, class, date, professor’s name, topic)
• creative title (use your imagiantion and create a cool title)
• use of literature and citations if applicable
• your grade will reflect grammatical inaccuracies in your work.