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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
The Latest Work6/11/2007 09:39:40This week I'm wrapping up my first year of graduate school, and that means there's a new crop of papers to share, which I've been working on the last few months. As usual they are stored in the Papers section of the site. I'll just do a little run-down. A Necessary Ideology: Politics, Pedagogy, and the Study of Religion Begins with emerging arguments that the study of religion is an inherently ideological project. Rather than trying to sidestep that ideology through complicated, philosophically neutral methodologies, argues that the ideological origins and work of religious studies are unavoidable and should be embraced, albeit responsibly. This came out of extended discussions in a seminar about the role of the concept of "religion" in our work as scholars of "religion." For me, Timothy Fitzgerald's The Ideology of Religious Studies was a very convincing argument that religious studies, as it has been conceived, is inescapably ideological. However, while Fitzgerald calls for the dissolution of "religion" departments, explore another alternative. The thinking here is essentially pragmatic, as well as experiential. Having read the recent obituaries of the philosopher Richard Rorty, I've been thinking that there may be some resonance between his thinking and what I've expressed here. This essay also includes an extended narrative of my experience with religions and the study of religion and the ideology of both. Horace Bushnell's Sense of American Theology (in Its Diversity) as an Interpretive Order Attempts to deal with the problem of interpretation suggested by the 19th century American theologian Horce Bushnell's influential theory of language through a reading of his sense of the social order as an organism. In some respects this paper catches me rather out of my league. It is on a 19th century American theologian who, while being quite influential in certain circles, has little ostensible bearing on the modern work I mainly engage in. My excuse for focusing on him was first of all pleasure: I enjoyed his writing and thinking immensely. In addition, I found elements in him that very much contributed to the particularly American process of religious modernity and secularization. The idea of organism and "comprehensive" Christianity he puts forth throughout his career seems very linked to assumptions about pluralism that are the often-unspoken gospel of American religiosity. At the end of the paper, I suggest connections between Bushnell's thinking and some of the findings of sociologist Robert Bellah. Explanation in Reivew A series of webpages summarizing the reviews of some recent work in the scientific study of religion, along with recommendations with how to procede in the dialog among religious studies scholars. This project is part of a larger effort to work on new forms for scholarship other than academic papers in the usual format. Through a hypertext website, I try to set a different tone for the discussion, a more literally colorful and exploratory one, both less careful than a standard paper and more engaging (I would hope). I hope to continue these sorts of experiments more in my work, if my teachers allow it. |
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