Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion

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Contents Preface Acknowledgments Copyright Permissions Part I: Redescribing Religion as Something Ordinary 1 More Than a Shapeless Beast: Lumbering through the Academy with the Study of Religion 2 Redescribing ‘Religion’ as Social Formation: Toward a Social Theory of Religion Part II: Dispatches from the Theory Wars 3 Writing a History of God: “Just the Same Game Wherever You Go” 4 Explaining the Sacred: Theorizing on Religion inthe Late Twentieth Century 5 “We’re All Stuck Somewhere”: Taming Ethnocentrism and Transcultural Understandings 6 The Economics of Spiritual Luxury: The Glittering Lobby and the World’s Parliament of Religions 7 “My Theory of the Brontosaurus . . .”: Postmodernism and “Theory” of Religion Part III: Culture Critics and Caretakers 8 A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual 9 Talking Past Each Other: The Issue of Public Intellectuals Revisited Part IV: Going Public: Teaching Theory 10 Our “Special Promise” as Teachers: Scholars of Religion and the Politics of Tolerance 11 Redescribing “Religion and . . Film: Teachingthe Insider/Outsider Problem 12 Methods and Theories in the Classroom: Teaching the Study of Myths and Rituals 13 Theorizing in the Introductory Course: A Survey of Resources Part V: Afterword Afterword References Index