Redescriptions

Although religion has long occupied the attention of scholars it has uniformly been assumed by them to be a special case, either to be nurtured and curated or explained away by developing theories specifically suited to it. This bracketing of our object of study has isolated the field and made it difficult for many to understand: Is religion a theological enterprise? Is it suited to the public university? Does it offend against some people’s sensibilities? Redescriptions: Toward a New Comparative Religion proposes a model for how to address this ambiguity by averring that the things scholars call religion are simply routine human doings that are therefore comparable to any other aspect of culture. The book offers a series of controlled experiments in which some novel conclusions about seemingly religious items—from myths of origins to memorials for the dead—are reached by placing them into some unexpected relationships of comparison.