Understanding Theories of Religion: An Introduction Paperback - 2015

From the rear cover

"Finding (or twisting) a red thread, linking pre-modern, modern, and, with this revised second edition, also post-modern thinking and theories of religion, is no easy task. Especially if you also aim at a more nuanced understanding by way of historicizing and contextualizing thinkers and theories. It takes comprehensive knowledge as well as a personal 'vision' of the discipline and field. Strenski has both. This book, therefore, is an excellent choice for scholars looking for a textbook for courses on the history and theories of the academic study of religions. Students are in need of both a red thread and a personal take when it comes to the introduction into the history and theories of the scientific study of religions."
--Tim Jensen, University of Southern Denmark

Understanding Theories of Religion explores the core methods and theorists in religion through the works of classic and contemporary figures from the history of anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. It offers a comprehensive study of the development of theories of religion, spanning the classics of early modern and Enlightenment Europe to modern theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and through to post-modern theories of religion and the latest theoretical trends. This second edition expands coverage of religious theories from the 1960s through to the present day, exploring topics including religion and post-modernism; race, sex, and gender; and religion and post-colonialism.

Updated throughout, the book offers illuminating insights into the questions that challenged various theorists, and how their successors then adapted and built upon their ideas. By integrating both critical and historical approaches, it reveals how the study of religion evolved in response to great cultural conflicts and major historical events. Individual chapters address the theory attached to a significant individual or school, and reveal how these ideas and methods were then brought into the study of religion. Offering a fresh perspective to conventional approaches which often seek only to demonstrate why theorists were wrong, this expanded new edition of Understanding Theories of Religion seeks to press the question of why these theorists so deeply believed that they were right.