The pragmatics of defining religion : : contexts, concepts, and contests / / Jan Platvoet and Arie L. Molendijk.

• Superior document: Studies in the history of religions, v. 84
• TeilnehmendeR: Platvoet, Jan,; Molendijk, Arie L.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands : : E. J. Brill,, 1999.
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Language: English
• Series: Numen Book Series 84.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

This volume promotes a pragmatic, anti-essentialist and anti-hegemonic approach to the problem of the definition of religion. It argues that definitions of religion are context-bound strategies for pursuing a variety of purposes, extra-academic as well as academic. Religions being immensely varied,...

Table of Contents

• Preliminary Material
• Preface
• Notes on the Contributors
• Introduction
• In Defence of Pragmatism / Arie L. Molendijk
• Modern Contexts
• The Politics of Defining Religion in Secular Society / James A. Beckford
• Religion as Claim / Massimo Introvigne
• Religion as Memory / Danièle Hervieu-Léger
• Paradoxes / Jacob A. Belzen
• Conceptual Changes
• ‘Religio’ and ‘Religion’ in the 18th Century / Ernst Feil
• Shifting Cargoes / Arie L. Molendijk
• THE SACRED in the Social Sciences / Wouter W. Belier
• Psychologists Define Religion / David M. Wulff
• Methodological Issues
• On Defining Religion / Hendrik Johan Adriaanse
• To Define or not to Define / Jan G. Platvoet
• Intuiting Religion / James L. Cox
• The Third Bank of the River / André F. Droogers
• Defining ‘Religions’ as the Domain of Study of the Empirical Sciences of Religions / Jan A.M. Snoek
• Definition Proposals
• Defining Religion in Spite of History
• The Definition of Religion
• What is Religion? / ter Borg Meerten B.
• On a Semantic Definition of Religion / Jeppe Sinding Jensen
• Religion as the Realization of Faith / Zock Hetty
• Epilogue
• Contexts, Concepts and Contests / Platvoet Jan G.
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Studies in the History of Religions Numen Book Series.