Embarking Upon The Study of Religion

by Tim J. Davis

The academic study of world religions or comparative religion is a fairly new field of inquiry. It attempts to analyze religious practices from a variety of perspectives, viewpoints and disciplines, sometimes looking for common elements in the human experience. Academic departments at most European universities only began to include courses in the comparative study of religion in their curriculums during the second half of the 19th century. Up until that time there were all kinds of religious studies, but people focused mainly on investigating aspects of their own traditions and worldviews. Philosophy and theology, around since the ancient and medieval worlds, have greatly informed modern religious scholarship. In fact, critical methods of analysis used in religious investigations today would not have been possible without these early areas of inquiry. Other academic fields like anthropology, art history, sociology, psychology, along with the historical-critical method for interpretation of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, all made their debut in higher education during the 1800’s. Scholars in these fields also worked to investigate aspects of religion that pertained to their own disciplines. In fact, much of the early groundbreaking work in the study of religion came from early anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists.

182 pages, Paperback

Published December 11, 2022