THINKING ABOUT RELIGION：AN HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THEORIES OF RELIGION

• Introduces the main methods, theories and theorists in the field.
  
• Engages with leading figures from the history of anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy and theology who have influenced the study of religion.
  
• Reveals how the study of religion evolved in response to great cultural conflicts and major historical events.
  
• Also considers the influence of inner experience, tacking issues such as human survival and wish-fulfilment.

Introduction: Thinking about Religion, Instead of Just Believing.

Part I: The Pre-history of the Study of Religion: Responses to an Expanding World.

1 Naturalism, God-given Reason, and the Quest for Natural Religion.

2 The Critique of Religion Also Begins with Criticism of the Bible.

Part II: Classic 19th Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: The Quest for the Origins of Religion in History.

3 The Shock of the Old: Max Müller's Search for the Soul of Europe.

4 The Shock of the 'Savage': Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution and Spirits.

5 Evolution in the Religion of the Bible: William Robertson Smith.

6 Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer.

Part III: Classic 20th Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: Defending the Inner Sanctum of Religious Experience or Storming It.

7 From Evolution to Religious Experience: Phenomenology of Religion.

8 Religious Experience Creates the World of the Modern Economy: Max Weber.

9 Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion.

10 Bronislaw Malinowski, Bipolarity and the "Sublime Folly" of Religion.

11 Seeing with the Social Eye: Émile Durkheim's "Religious Sociology".

12 Eliade: Turning the "Worm of Doubt".

13 Conclusion: Science of Religion, the Bible and Prince Charming.

Index