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The Critical Religion blog is a shared (multi-author) blog. The views represented are the personal views of individual authors and should not be taken to represent the position of the Critical Religion Research Group as a whole.-
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Tag Archives: religion
An Argument for Thinking of Religions as Vestigial States
This is a guest posting by Prof. Naomi Goldenberg, introducing some of the themes she will be addressing when she visits the UK in late April 2012. My work at present is focused on developing the hypothesis that religions … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Critical Religion, James Crawford, law, religion, religion-secular binary, secular
1 Comment
The myth of religion and the tyranny of Richard Dawkins’ discontinuous mind
In his New Statesman article “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind” [NS 19 Dec 2011 – 1 Jan 2012] Richard Dawkins suggests how arbitrary our classificatory dividing lines are. And yet the substance of his arguments rests on precisely such … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Christopher Hitchens, Critical Religion, nature, religion, religion-secular binary, Richard Dawkins
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Between the years in the Andes: Celebrating the new beginnings at different times of the year
Each June and August people in the Andean countries, especially Peru, Bolivia and northern Argentina, celebrate the arrival of the new native or ancestral year. The fact that this happens in two different months may show a lack of coherence, … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Andes, Critical Religion, culture, politics, Quechua, religion
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What kind of ‘minorities’ are the Christians of the Middle East?
This is a comment by Dr Harry Hagopian on issues raised in an earlier article by Michael Marten here on the CR blog, and on Ekklesia. Dr Hagopian is an international lawyer, ecumenist and EU political consultant. He also acts … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Christian, church, clash of civilisations, Critical Religion, Jew, Middle East, Muslim, religion
1 Comment
Christians as ‘minorities’ in the Middle East?
Many attempts to think about the population groupings in the contemporary Middle East, however that is defined, tend away from terms related to nation-states – a relatively new creation, often on the part of colonial powers – towards other forms … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Christian, church, clash of civilisations, Critical Religion, Jew, Middle East, Muslim, religion
5 Comments
Is there anything good to be said for ‘Religion’?
As readers of the Critical Religion blog may be aware, my trenchant colleague Tim Fitzgerald has once more launched a missile against the category of ‘religion’ in his recent posting (30 May 2011) as the word reappeared in what he … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged agency, capitalism, Critical Religion, deconstruction, democratic intellect, George Elder Davie, human condition, ideology, nihilism, postcolonial, religion, riots, ritual, shaman-ritual complex, theology, Timothy Fitzgerald
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Musicology and philosophy, religion and political science – the issue of interdisciplinarity
I have for some time been reflecting on why it is that so few ‘secular’ scholars engage meaningfully with ‘religion’, or to put it another way: why is it that so many of us as religion scholars depend upon and … Continue reading
“Saving the Indiansʼ souls” in colonial Peru – Contributions to Religion at the Stirling Workshop on Andean Studies
On the 27th and 28th of May 2011 we held at Stirling University the first research workshop on Andean Studies in the UK, attended by senior and postgraduate colleagues in order to share and discuss their most recent research in … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Amerindian languages, Andes, colonial era, conversion, Critical Religion, culture, dead/death, language of Christianisation, mission, mission history, power, Quechua, religion, soul, translation
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Questioning ‘the global resurgence of religion’
Scott M. Thomas has been widely praised for his book The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (NY & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005). This is an ambitious … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged Critical Religion, global, international relations, religion, secular
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Patriarchy, Patrimonialism – and Paradigm Change
Following some years in so-called early-retirement it was with much interest that I nervously ventured out once again to a mainstream academic conference: that of the Sociology of Religion Research Group of the British Sociological Association held at Easter in … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Religion, University of Stirling
Tagged crisis, Critical Religion, patriarchy, patrimonialism, religion, sociology of religion, theology
1 Comment
