Synopses & Reviews
Unlike other humanistic disciplines, the academic study of religion must contend with a phenomenon that touches every dimension of human experience. For scholars so engaged, the study of religion often becomes a cross-cultural as well as a necessarily interdisciplinary endeavor. In this collection of original essays, Jon R. Stone has brought together the intellectual autobiographies of fourteen senior scholars--all with national or international reputations in their respective fields--each of whom reflects upon his or her own theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches to the study of religion. Taken together, these essays represent the variety of research methods and interpretive rigor mature scholars bring to the task of examining religious phenomena, religious actions, religious movements, and religious ideas.
About the Author
Jon R. Stone currently teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of
On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism (SMP).
Table of Contents
Introduction--Jon R. Stone * Methods in My Life--Ninian Smart * From Great Neck to Swift Hall: Confessions of a Reluctant Historian of Religions--Wendy Doniger * There is No Religion There--Frits Staal * Climbing the Foothills of Understanding--John Hick * From History to Religion--Jacob Neusner * Theological Autobiography--James M. Robinson * Half a Life in Religious Studies: Confessions of an 'Historical Historian'--Martin E. Marty * On Theory-Driven Methods--Rodney Stark * On Studying Religion--Andrew M. Greeley * Of Churches, Courts, and Moral Order--Phillip E. Hammond * Religion as Life and Text: Postmodern Re-figurations--Edith Wyschogrod * Retracings--Mark C. Taylor * Who Are You Really, and What Were You Before?: Reflections on a Thinking Life--Giles Gunn * The Rest is History--Ivan Strenski *