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Preface
- Baylor University Press
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ix Preface Many Western societies today are searching for a definition of religion that will guide them in determining legal, political, and educational issues in this day of increasing social and cultural diversity. When natural scientists and social scientists study religion, they need to be able to pin the subject down. oddly, this is not something that religious studies can help us with. It is itself a field in search of definition, for defining religion is not an empirical matter but a question of language usage. Religion is one of those things that must be defined before we can identify cases. experts frequently declare that defining religion is impossible. Indeed it has proved impossible to reach entire agreement when trying to define the thing. This book will, instead, show how we define the word. This is the difference between real (or referential) and nominal definitions. And this will also aid in defining spiritual and secular, which are similarly controversial today. We need to recognize that these are words, whatever else they are, and find in our usage the key to defining the subject. It has been complained that this is taking the dominant modern discourse to be the nature of reality. But culture and language have their rules. Scholars might try to correct matters with definitions that reach for transcendence. But x || Preface religion has proved to be a tough word, which is resisting our well meant revisions. After showing our present usage, this book will show how nominal definitions of religion or religious do all the work that definitions need to do, in clarifying problems encountered in education, law, political philosophy and debate, cosmology, psychology, anthropology , sociology, theology, and so on. of course we are consideringenglish words, which seems to open us to accusations of ethnocentrism, of projecting a Western sense of things onto the rest of the world. Actually, it is quite the contrary. By admitting that our words primarily describe Western understandings , we thereby respect the cultural diversity we talk about. None of us speaks language-in-general, so it is rather the effort to offer a culture-free and referential definition that is imperialistic. In dealing with the applications of our usage in other fields we cannot possibly be comprehensive, but I have chosen examples that will be familiar to readers and that reveal my theme. We will not address all the subjects that scholars in those fields are concerned with, but we will try to clarify the terms they are using in their thinking and research. Thus we will show the practical value of what may at first seem an abstract definition. Among those who have helped me with information and encouragement I would especially like to mention Diogenes Allen, Michael Armer, Roger Blashfield, Jerald Brauer, Clarke Cochran, Donald Dewsbury, Richard Fenn, Charles Glenn, Frederick Gregory, Michael eldridge, David hackett, hans hillerbrand, Peter Iver Kaufman, James Keesling, Kirk Ludwig, ernst Mayr, D. Z. Phillips, h. Jefferson Powell, Richard L. Pratt Jr., hilary Putnam, Lawrence Sullivan, Kenneth Wald, and Robert Wuthnow. The earhart Foundation repeatedly gave needed financial assistance, and the Center for the Study of World Religions at harvard offered the opportunity to be part of a community of interested scholars. Groups that welcomed presentations on the subject included the philosophy and religion departments at the University of Florida, the American Society for Church history, the Rutgers Center for historical Analysis, and the Conference on Faith and history. I would also like to acknowledge [54.160.133.33] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:53 GMT) Preface || xi the help that my editor, Carey Newman, has offered at every step, as well as the suggestions by anonymous readers. Chapters 2, 4, 8, and 9 draw from articles I published as “Resurrecting Religion in a New (hermeneutical) Dimension,” Fides et Historia 30 (1999): 21–30, with rejoinder to critics in 31 (1999): 167–68; “Defining Religion and the Present Supreme Court,” Journal of Law and Public Policy (Florida) 6 (1994): 167–80; “Is Religion a Language Game? A Real-World Critique of the Cultural-Linguistic Theory,”TheologyToday51(1995): 594–99;“SecularSociety/Religious Population: our Tacit Rules for Using the Term ‘Secularization,’” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37 (1998): 249–53. I thank all these journals for permission to include this information, as well as oxford University Press, for arguments made in The Decline of the Secular University (2006). ...