What is Religious Studies? (A Reader)

The study of religion has never been more important. Religion remains central to the individual and communal lives of the majority of people around the world and provides some of the clearest fracture lines in contemporary global and national politics. This volume scrutinises different ways in which Religious Studies has been imagined in recent decades. It brings together key modern and contemporary essays to present a broad yet penetrating examination of the study of religion as an intellectual enterprise. Grouped into six thematic sections, each essay outlines and defends a particular approach to Religious Studies as a field of enquiry. The introduction and conclusion locate the debate in its wider intellectual, cultural and political context. The essays raise numerous questions: What is Religious Studies?; Who is it for?; What does it do?; Where is it going? The aim of the volume is to clarify the nature and purpose of Religious Studies and to renew analytic rigour in the study of religion.