Defining Religion
Theorists
Key Concepts
Case Studies & Activities
Misc.
100

What are the three primary definitional strategies in religious studies?

Essentialism, functionalism, and family resemblance

100

This thinker said religion is "the opium of the people."

Karl Marx

100

What are "insiders" and "outsiders"?

Insiders are practitioners of a religion, while outsiders study religion from the outside. 

100

United States v. Seeger (1965) asked what question?

What counts as "religion" under U.S. law?

100

What is the insider-outsider problem?

The gap between participants and non-participants (evident across a wide number of academic disciplines); the observer is challenged to devise ways either to overcome it or account for it

200

What does it mean to study religion "critically"?

Not about being negative; about analyzing assumptions, power, and context rather than accepting claims at face value.

200

Which thinker distinguished between the sacred and the profane?

Émile Durkheim

200

What is animism, according to Tylor, and how has it been critiqued?

Belief in spirits our souls; critiqued as overly simplistic and evolutionary/ethnocentric. 

200

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "The Danger of a Single Story" illuminated what critique of essentialism?

Reducing traditions to a single essence erases complexity and diversity.

200
What distinction did the Supreme Cout draw in Abington v. Schempp (1963)?

Study about religion is permissible, but religious instruction is not

300

Why does McCutcheon compare defining religion to deciding whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables?

He wants to demonstrate that definitions and categories are constructed, not natural or neutral.

300

This thinker conducted a thought experiment about dreams to develop his theory of animism. 

Edward Tylor

300

Durkheim described the powerful feeling generated in crowds and communal rituals with this phrase

Collective effervescence
300

We analyzed the documentary Holy Ghost People (1967) through the lens of which method?

Thick description / symbolic anthropology

300

What is the end-time apathy hypothesis?

Belief in imminent apocalypse that reduces concern for environmental issues. 

400

Which terms are frequently translated into English as "religion" or "piety" despite having non-Latin roots?

Sanatana-dharma, eusebeia, li

400

This thinker argued the function of religion is to manage deep psychological tensions.

Sigmund Freud

400

What are the three approaches to human identity (in terms of bodily composition)?

Materialism, dualism, and psychosomatic unity

400

What did the Sufi whirling dervishes demonstrate about embodied religion?

Physical acts are forms of religious devotion; the body creates an opening to the sacred

400

What is the risk of scholars immersing themselves too deeply in the communities they study?

They may risk "acting as guests in other people's cultural houses" -- careful not to offend and hesitant to ask critical questions. The danger is that scholarship becomes purely descriptive instead of analytical. 

500

What is the World Religions Paradigm (WRP), and what are its core assumptions?

A Western, Protestant Christian framework for categorizing religions. Presents religions as distinct, timeless, and bounded to set beliefs and practices -- assumptions that oversimplify and reflect Protestant Christian/Western biases. 

500

Who defined religion as "a system which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic"?

Clifford Geertz

500

What is the difference between thin and thick description?

Thin = surface account; purely observational. Thick = interprets meaning and context. 

500

What are the two main characteristics of kosher land animals?

Split hooves; chews its cud

500

What are the 3 Es we discussed in our class on embodiment, and what do they mean?

Embodied (lived with and through the body), emplaced (happening in, shaped by, and giving meaning to specific places), enacted (made real by doing).