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The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric book cover

1st Edition

The Discipline of Religion Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric

By Russell T. McCutcheon Copyright 2003
    342 Pages
    by Routledge

    352 Pages
    by Routledge
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    The Discipline of Religion is a lively critical journey through religious studies today, looking at its recent growth as an academic discipline, and its contemporary political and social meanings. Focusing on the differences between religious belief and academic religious discourse, Russell T. McCutcheon argues that the invention of religion as a discipline blurs the distinction between criticism and doctrine in its assertion of the relevance of faith as a credible object of study. In the leap from disciplinary criticism to avowal of actual cosmic and moral meaning, schools of religious studies extend their powers far beyond universities and into the everyday lives of those outside, managing and curtailing specific types of speech and dissent.

    Introduction PART I Genealogy of credibility 1 Form, content, and the treasury of devices 2 God’s people defending their ivory towers: reassessing the study of religion’s emergence in the U.S. 3 Autonomy, unity, and crisis: rhetoric and the invention of a discipline 4 Classification and the dog’s breakfast: the American Academy of Religion’s research interest survey PART II Techniques of dominance 5 The good, the bad, and the ugly: looking past the violence of cults and fanatics 6 Alienation, apprenticeship, and the crisis of academic labor 7 “Like small bumps on the back of the neck … ”: the problem of evil as something ordinary 8 The jargon of authenticity and the study of religion PART III Reworking the residue from our imperfect past 9 Methods, theories, and the terrors of history: closing the Eliadean era with some dignity 10 The perfect past and the irony of narrative: Bruce Lincoln’s Theorizing Myth 11 “Religion” and the citizen’s unrequited desires: chips from the religion industry’s workshop 12 “Religion” and the governable self, Afterword

    Biography

    RUSSELL T. MCCUTCHEON is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He is author of Manufacturing Religion (1997) and Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (2001), editor of The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion (1999), and co-editor with Willi Braun of Guide to the Study of Religion (2000).

    ' ... as a contribution to meta-theory The Discipline of Religion is a well-argued and thought-provoking book.' - Numen
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