History and the Study of Religion
The Ancient Mediterranean as a Test Case
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 20 September 2024
- ISBN 9780197775677
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages400 pages
- Size 236x165x30 mm
- Weight 726 g
- Language English 539
Categories
Short description:
What is religion? How is religion constituted as a social entity? Is religion a useful category for historians, anthropologists, and sociologists? In History and the Study of Religion Stanley Stowers addresses these questions and discusses examples from ancient Greek, Roman, Judean and especially early Christian religion to illustrate a theory of religion as a social kind. He explains how ancient Mediterranean religion consisted of four sub-kinds: the religion of everyday social exchange, civic religion, the religion of literate and literary experts, and the religion of literate experts with political power. Through these categories he shows how Christianity arose and succeeded.
MoreLong description:
There has long been a trend in religious studies that denies that religion can be an effective category for historians to use across time and cultures. In History and the Study of Religion Stanley Stowers takes on this assessment by demonstrating a theory of religion that answers the criticisms raised by those claiming that religion is not a useful concept. Drawing on his many years of researching and teaching the history of ancient Christianity in the context of the Mediterranean cultures, he offers a detailed and comprehensive account of how religion serves as a valuable, and even necessary, theory.
Stowers argues that religion is a social kind, a real and relatively stable cross-cultural entity in the social world. Through key developments in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and social theory applied to examples from the ancient Mediterranean and ethnographic analyses, he illustrates the usefulness for creating social theory and historical explanation. The beginnings of Christianity can be explained as arising from ancient Mediterranean religion, which consisted of three sub-kinds: the religion of everyday social exchange, civic religion, and the religion of literate and literary experts. Christianity emerged primarily from a social field of the experts in interaction with the other two sub-kinds so as to produce a fourth sub-kind, the religion of literate experts with political power. For this last, Stowers discusses topics such as the Christian movement's success in the Roman Empire, whether it was a socially and morally superior form of religion, how it was socially constituted in comparison to other religion in the Empire, its relation to philosophy, whether it was monotheistic, and its most fundamental social dynamics.
History and the Study of Religion offers a valuable and far-reaching analysis of theory and religious history. Among its greatest strengths is its orientation of religious studies firmly within the realm of the humanities and social sciences and as a decidedly cross-disciplinary endeavor. In short, History and the Study of Religion solidifies Stowers' legacy as a generational leader in the field.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
1. History and the Study of Religion
Part 1: Religion as a Social Kind
2: Realism and Anti-Realism About Religion
3. Theorizing Social Kinds
4. Theorizing Religion as a Social Kind
Part 2: Religion and Social Theory
5. Social Theory: The Search for the Magic Glue and the Status of Religion
6. Thinking the Ontology of Religion: Toward a Better Social Ontology
Part 3: Christian Formation in the Ancient Mediterranean as a Test Case
7. Early Christianity as Evidence for Socially Superior Religion
8. The Formation of Christianity: Freelance Literate Experts, Literate Experts with Political-Institutional Power, and Non-Expert Insiders
9. Explaining the Evidence of Ancient Christian Formation
10. Concluding Arguments: Does Kinds Theory Aid Social Ontological Analysis?
Index
