For their final, the students in Theorizing Religion have to write brief essays about three of the following quotations, taken from our readings over the course of the semester - but I'm sort of hoping they'll look at the whole list and realize how much they've learned (or should have, or could have)! Each quotation is selected not so much (or not only) as a thumbnail for the argument of its author as for the way it opens one of the broader issues we've been exploring.
1. For a society based upon the production of commodities, … Christianity ... is the most fitting form of religion.
2. The academic study of religion is a child of the Enlightenment.
3. The first religious principles must be secondary.
4. In religion ... the idea of God does not rank as high as you think.
5. Where there is dirt there is system.
6. By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.
7. Haitian Voudou is not a religion of the empowered and the privileged.
8. There are no religions that are false.
9. Religion helps to link realities that modernity dichotomized and that globalization has now destabilized.
10. Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.
11. Homo religiosus represents the “total man.”
12. There is no such thing as a generic pluralist.
13. The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.
(Sources: 1. Karl Marx; 2. Jonathan Z. Smith; 3. David Hume; 4. Friedrich Schleiermacher; 5. Mary Douglas; 6. William James; 7. Karen McCarthy Brown; 8. Emile Durkheim; 9. Miguel Vasquez; 10. Sigmund Freud; 11. Mircea Eliade; 12. Diana Eck; 13. Max Weber)
1. For a society based upon the production of commodities, … Christianity ... is the most fitting form of religion.
2. The academic study of religion is a child of the Enlightenment.
3. The first religious principles must be secondary.
4. In religion ... the idea of God does not rank as high as you think.
5. Where there is dirt there is system.
6. By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.
7. Haitian Voudou is not a religion of the empowered and the privileged.
8. There are no religions that are false.
9. Religion helps to link realities that modernity dichotomized and that globalization has now destabilized.
10. Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.
11. Homo religiosus represents the “total man.”
12. There is no such thing as a generic pluralist.
13. The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.
(Sources: 1. Karl Marx; 2. Jonathan Z. Smith; 3. David Hume; 4. Friedrich Schleiermacher; 5. Mary Douglas; 6. William James; 7. Karen McCarthy Brown; 8. Emile Durkheim; 9. Miguel Vasquez; 10. Sigmund Freud; 11. Mircea Eliade; 12. Diana Eck; 13. Max Weber)
