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History and the study of religion : the ancient Mediterranean as a test case
- Author / Creator
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- Summary
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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', Stanl...
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.
Details
- Creator
- Stanley Stowers
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
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- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024]
- ©2024
- Physical Details
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- 1 online resource
- data file
- ISBNs
- 9780197775707, 0197775705, 9780197775677
- OCLC
- on1431188482
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 History and the Study of Religion -- The Lares Missed and Mystified -- Approaches That Obscure How Religion Worked -- Social Theory: The Individual, Experience, Lived Religion? -- Part ONE Religion As a Social Kind -- 2 Realism and Antirealism About Religion -- From the Post-Kantian Dead End to Naturalistic Realism -- Antirealism About Religion and Alternatives -- Sciences and Philosophy: From Subjects to Minds -- 3 Theorizing Social Kinds -- Social Kinds, Social Research, and Social Critique
- 4 Toward Theorizing Religion as a Social Kind -- The Two Leading Theories of Mind -- Why the Theory Needs Naturalistic Realism -- God/NEB Concepts Plus Environmental Regularities -- Kicking God Off the Farm and Out of the Kitchen -- Cognition and Social Practices -- Who Owns the Products of Nature? -- Some Implications of the Theory -- Part Two 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 -- The Philosophical Lay of the Land
- Recent Social Theory: The Magic Glue of Individualism Or Complex Grounding? -- Toward an Ontology of Religion -- Part Three Christian Formation in the Ancient Mediterranean as a Test Case -- 7 Early Christianity as Evidence for Socially Superior Religion -- Was Ancient Mediterranean Religion a Market of Religious Goods and Services? -- A Way Forward: Social Economies and Microsociology -- An Alternative to a Totally Novel Christianity Triumphing By Superior Morality and Message
- 8 The Formation of Christianity: Freelance Literate Experts, Literate Experts With Political-Institutional Power, and Nonexpert Insiders -- Facing Down the Myth of Original Purity and Intellectual Corruption -- Back to the Field of the First Three Centuries -- The Organization of the Field Supporting the Subkind Freelance Literate: Early Christian -- The Location and Role of Religion in the Field -- The Attack On Superstition, "Popular Religion," and Civic Notions of the Gods -- Thought, Writing, and Position in the Field: Examples -- The Movement's Relation to the RESE and Civic Religion
- A Market of Discursive Goods/Mind Goods? -- 9 Explaining the Evidence of Ancient Christian Formation -- Reassessing Traditionalist, Triumphalist, and Cultural Evolutionist Claims About Early Christianity -- The Explosive Growth of Christianity Due to Its Patent Superiority? -- Concluding Illustration: Early Christian Charity -- A Non-Christian Literate Discourse About Giving to the Destitute -- 10 Concluding Arguments: Does Kinds Theory Aid Social Ontological Analysis? -- Gods/NEBS and Grounding in the External View -- Time and Ontological Change -- Index