Cambridge University Press
9780521883917 - The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies - Edited by Robert A. Orsi
Frontmatter/Prelims

The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies

The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies is both informative and provocative, introducing readers to key debates in the contemporary study of religion and suggesting future research possibilities. A group of distinguished scholars takes up some of the most pressing theoretical questions in the field. What is a “religious tradition”? How are religious texts read? What takes place when a religious practitioner stands before a representation of gods or goddesses, ghosts, ancestors, saints, and other special beings? What roles is religion playing in contemporary global society? The volume emphasizes religion as a lived practice, stressing that people have used and continue to use religious media to engage the circumstances of their lives. This underlying conviction provides a realistic perspective on religion, and the volume’s chapters engage with real-world religious practices. The chapters should prove valuable and interesting to a broad audience, including scholars in the humanities and social sciences and a general readership, as well as students of religious studies.

Robert A. Orsi is Professor of Religious Studies and History and Grace Craddock Nagle Professor of Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of several prize-winning books, including The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950, 3rd Edition (2010); Thank You, Saint Jude: Women’s Devotions to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1996); and Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005).

Cambridge Companions to Religion

This is a series of companions to major topics and key figures in theology and religious studies. Each volume contains specially commissioned chapters by international scholars, which provide an accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject for new readers and nonspecialists.

Other Titles in the Series

American Judaism Edited by Dana Evan Kaplan

Karl Barth Edited by John Webster

The Bible, 2nd edition Edited by Bruce Chilton

Biblical Interpretation Edited by John Barton

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Edited by John de Gruchy

John Calvin Edited by Donal K. McKim

Christian Doctrine Edited by Colin Gunton

Christian Ethics Edited by Robin Gill

Christian Philosophical Theology Edited by Charles Taliaferro and Chad V. Meister

Classical Islamic Theology Edited by Tim Winter

Jonathan Edwards Edited by Stephen J. Stein

Feminist Theology Edited by Susan Frank Parsons

The Jesuits Edited by Thomas Worcester

Jesus Edited by Markus Bockmuehl

Liberation Theology Edited by Chris Rowland

C. S. Lewis Edited by Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward

Martin Luther Edited by Donald K. McKim

Medieval Jewish Philosophy Edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman

Miracles Edited by Graham H. Twelfthtree

Modern Jewish Philosophy Edited by Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon

Mohammed Edited by Jonathan E. Brockup

Thomas More Edited by George M. Logan

Postmodern Theology Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Puritanism Edited by John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim

The Qur’an Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe

The Trinity Edited by Peter C. Phan

Karl Rahner Edited by Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines

Reformation Theology Edited by David Bagchi and David Steinmetz

Freidrich Schleiermacher Edited by Jacqueline Mariña

Science And Religion Edited by Peter Harrison

St. Paul Edited by James D. G. Dunn

The Talmud and Rabbinic Literature Edited by Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee

Hans Urs Von Balthasar Edited by Edward T. Oakes and David Moss

JOhn Wesley Edited by Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers

The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies

Edited by

Robert A. Orsi

Northwestern University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012
Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

The Cambridge companion to religious studies / edited by Robert A. Orsi.
p. cm. – (Cambridge Companions to religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-88391-7 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-521-71014-5 (paperback)
1. Religion – Study and teaching. 2. Religion – Research. I. Orsi, Robert A.
BL41.C34 2011
200–dc22 2011010731

ISBN 978-0-521-88391-7 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-71014-5 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Notes on contributors
 ix
Acknowledgments
 xiii
Introduction
Robert A. Orsi
 1
Part one  Religion and religious studies: the irony of inheritance
 15
1.        On sympathy, suspicion, and studying religion: historical reflections on a doubled inheritance
Leigh E. Schmidt
 17
2.        Thinking about religion, belief, and politics
Talal Asad
 36
3.        Special things as building blocks of religions
Ann Taves
 58
4.        The problem of the holy
Robert A. Orsi
 84
Part two  Major theoretical problems
 107
5.        Social order or social chaos
Michael J. Puett
 109
6.        Tradition: the power of constraint
Michael L. Satlow
 130
7.        The text and the world
Anne M. Blackburn
 151
8.        On the role of normativity in religious studies
Thomas A. Lewis
 168
9.        Translation
Martin Kavka
 186
10.       Material religion
Matthew Engelke
 209
11.       Theology and the study of religion: a relationship
Christine Helmer
 230
Part threeMethodological variations
 256
12.       Buddhism and violence
Bernard Faure
 257
13.       Practicing religions
Courtney Bender
 273
14.       The look of the sacred
David Morgan
 296
15.       Reforming culture: law and religion today
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
 319
16.       Sexing religion
R. Marie Griffith
 338
17.       Constituting ethical subjectivities
Leela Prasad
 360
18.       Neo-Pentecostalism and globalization
Marla F. Frederick
 380
19.       Religious criticism, secular critique, and the “critical study of religion”: lessons from the study of Islam
Noah Salomon and Jeremy F. Walton
 403
Index
 421

Notes on contributors

Talal Asad

is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. His publications include Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003); and, most recently, On Suicide Bombing (Columbia University Press, 2007).

Courtney Bender

is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. She is author of The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Heaven’s Kitchen: Practicing Religion at God’s Love We Deliver (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Anne M. Blackburn

Associate Professor of South Asian Studies and Buddhist Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University, is author of Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture (Princeton University Press, 2001) and, most recently, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Matthew Engelke

is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the London School of Economics. His book A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church (University of California Press, 2007) won the 2008 Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion and the 2009 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing.

Bernard Faure

is Kao Professor in Japanese Religion at Columbia University. His books include The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton University Press, 1998); The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender (Princeton University Press, 2003); and Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Marla F. Frederick

is Morris Kahn Professor of African and African American Studies and a member of the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. She is the author of Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith (University of California Press, 2003).

R. Marie Griffith

is the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor and Director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis. Her books include God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (University of California Press, 1997), Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (University of California Press, 2004), and American Religions: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Christine Helmer

is Professor of Religious Studies and Adjunct Professor of German at Northwestern University. She is the author of The Trinity and Martin Luther (Zabern, 1999) and has published numerous articles and edited (and coedited) volumes in the areas of Luther studies, Schleiermacher studies, biblical theology, philosophy of religion, liberal theology, and constructive theology, most recently The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times (Fortress, 2009).

Martin Kavka

is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. He is the author of Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2004), which in 2008 was awarded the inaugural Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Jewish thought and philosophy by the Association for Jewish Studies. He is coeditor of Tradition in the Public Square: A David Novak Reader (Eerdmans, 2008) and Saintly Influence: Edith Wyschogrod and the Possibilities of Philosophy of Religion (Fordham University Press, 2009).

Thomas A. Lewis

is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. His publications include Freedom and Tradition in Hegel: Reconsidering Anthropology, Ethics, and Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005); Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel (Oxford University Press, 2011); and numerous articles on methodology in the study of religion, religion and politics, liberation theology, and communitarianism.

David Morgan

is Professor of Religion at Duke University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. His most recent book is The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America (Routledge, 2007). He edited and contributed to Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture (Routledge, 2008).

Robert A. Orsi

is Professor of Religious Studies and History and the Grace Craddock Nagle Professor of Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. His most recent book is Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton University Press, 2005), which won the 2005 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective Studies Category, from the American Academy of Religion.

Leela Prasad

is Associate Professor in the Religion Department at Duke University. Her book Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town (Columbia University Press, 2007) was awarded the 2007 Best First Book in the History of Religions Prize from the American Academy of Religion.

Michael J. Puett

is Professor of Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. His books include To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2002), and he is coauthor, with Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, and Bennett Simon, of Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Noah Salomon

is Assistant Professor of Religion at Carleton College, where he teaches courses in Islamic studies and theory and method in the study of religion. He is the author of recent articles on Muslim piety movements in contemporary Sudan and is preparing a manuscript, In the Shadow of Salvation: Sufis, Salafis and the Project of Late Islamism in Contemporary Sudan.

Michael L. Satlow

is Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. Among his books are Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2001) and Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice (Columbia University Press, 2006).

Leigh E. Schmidt

is the Edward Mallinckrodt University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of numerous books, including Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2000), which won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Historical Studies and the John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association; and Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (HarperOne, 2005).

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

is Professor of Law and Director of the Law and Religion Project at the University of Buffalo. Her publications include The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (Princeton University Press, 2005) and Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Ann Taves

is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara and holder of the Virgil Cordano O.F.M. Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies. Her book Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton University Press, 1999) won the 2000 Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy and Religion. Her most recent book is Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Jeremy F. Walton

is Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in New York University’s Religious Studies Program. He is currently at work on Horizons and Histories of Liberal Piety: Civil Islam and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey and is coeditor of Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency (University of Chicago Press, 2010).



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