Portrait

Religion and Society · 2021

• Sociology
• Epistemology
• Sociology

The study of religion is a challenge. It means trying to understand the energies and visions that have created, undergirded, and sometimes disrupted the great civilizations and cultures of the world. It means studying the history and diversity of the ways people have shaped worlds of meaning in response to or relation to what they may call the ‘transcendent’, or in response to science and technology, or in response to other traditions of meaning. It means studying the many ways people have given an account of the transcendent and the ways some traditions have gotten along quite well without an understanding of the transcendent. It means studying the symbolic, interpretive, scriptural forms over which traditions of faith and practice have argued through the centuries and continue to argue today. It means studying the construction of words like ‘religion’, ‘faith’, ‘tradition’, ‘theology’, and ‘spirituality’.