ABSTRACT
The Discipline of Religion is a lively critical journey through religious studies today, looking at its recent growth as an academic discipline, and its contemporary political and social meanings. Focusing on the differences between religious belief and academic religious discourse, Russell T. McCutcheon argues that the invention of religion as a discipline blurs the distinction between criticism and doctrine in its assertion of the relevance of faith as a credible object of study. In the leap from disciplinary criticism to avowal of actual cosmic and moral meaning, schools of religious studies extend their powers far beyond universities and into the everyday lives of those outside, managing and curtailing specific types of speech and dissent.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |2 pages
PART I Genealogy of credibility
chapter 2|16 pages
God’s people defending their ivory towers: reassessing the study of religion’s emergence in the U.S
chapter 4|16 pages
Classification and the dog’s breakfast
part |2 pages
PART II Techniques of dominance
chapter 7|21 pages
“Like small bumps on the back of the neck … ”
part |2 pages
PART III Reworking the residue from our imperfect past