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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Semantics And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Semantics And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
This essay argues that the approach to meaning articulated by Donald Davidson supplies all the student of religion needs to know about this subject. By focusing on interpretation as understood by Davidson, we can understand, for example, the beliefs and practices of a people such as the Dogon of Mali. By adding to this the evidence of ethnography and history, students of religion can give a compelling account of change and adjudicate between competing analyses.
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Reports of a bizarre new religious phenomenon made their way over the mountains from Tennessee during the summer and fall of 1804. For several years, readers in the eastern states had been eagerly consuming news of the Great Revival, the powerful succession of Presbyterian sacramental festivals and Methodist camp meetings that played a formative role in the development of the southern Bible Belt and the emergence of early American evangelicalism. Letters from the frontier frequently included vivid descriptions of the so-called “falling exercise,” in which the bodies of revival converts crumpled to the ground during powerful sermon performances on the …
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to …
早期 '地' 和 '土'之观 (Concepts Of Earth And Land In Early Chinese Texts), Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)
早期 '地' 和 '土'之观 (Concepts Of Earth And Land In Early Chinese Texts), Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Many studies have explored conceptualizations of heaven (tian 天) in early Chinese thought, but few if any have explored understandings of heaven's later cosmological counterpart, earth (di 地). This article examines Chinese understandings of earth and land (tu 土) in pre-Qin 先秦sources. In ancient texts such as the Book of Odes (Shi jing詩經) and Book of Documents (Shang shu尚書), the earth is not yet the paired counterpart to heaven that it will become in later Warring States (fifth-third centuries BCE) texts. Older works often depict earth and land as passive recipients of heaven's …
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Donald Davidson’s concept of “anomalous monism” is not nearly as well known as his related attack on the idea of “conceptual schemes,” though they are closely related. This concept, I shall argue, has several important implications for the study of religion. In particular, it implies that, as an account of mind and language, “cognitive science” is going to be of limited interest. Moreover, and that approaches to the study of religion based on models drawn from cognitive science are likely to be “degenerate research programmes.” If this is so, then we can reasonably marginalize such programmes to the extent that …
Book Review: Hsieh Liang-Tso And The Analects Of Confucius: Humane Learning As A Religious Quest, Thomas Selover, Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)
Book Review: Hsieh Liang-Tso And The Analects Of Confucius: Humane Learning As A Religious Quest, Thomas Selover, Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Hsieh Liang-tso is the first volume to explore Chinese traditions in the Academy Series sponsored by Oxford and the American Academy of Religion. Most previous titles in the series focus on Christianity, which perhaps explains Selover’s attention to the perspectives of comparative religions and comparative theology in his introduction. There he briefly traces the history of the issues concerning the religious dimensions of the Chinese literati tradition and outlines a comparative framework for approaching eleventh-century Chinese thought. Inspired by Robert Neville’s Beyond the Masks of God, Selover focuses in the introduction on four themes—scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. This framework, …
Book Review: Meeting Of Minds: Intellectual And Religious Interaction In East Asian Traditions Of Thought, Irene Bloom, Joshua Fogel, Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)
Book Review: Meeting Of Minds: Intellectual And Religious Interaction In East Asian Traditions Of Thought, Irene Bloom, Joshua Fogel, Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Meeting of Minds: Intellectual and Religious Interaction in East Asian Traditions of Thought, a volume of eleven essays written in honor of Wing-tsit Chan and William Theodore de Bary, proposes to explore how Confucian and Neo-Confucian traditions have responded to and have influenced other traditions (Buddhist, Taoist, folk, Japanese nativist, and so on) in China and Japan. The essays are arranged first geographically (seven articles on China precede four on Japan) and then roughly chronologically. All essays, save one, describe Sung or post-Sung developments. A few sentences per essay must suffice in this review. [excerpt]
War And Its Discontents: Pacifism And Quietism In The Abrahamic Traditions (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
War And Its Discontents: Pacifism And Quietism In The Abrahamic Traditions (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, War and Its Discontents: Pacifism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Traditions, edited by J. Patout Burns. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996.
Philanthropy As A Virtue In Late Antiquity And The Middle Ages, G. Scott Davis
Philanthropy As A Virtue In Late Antiquity And The Middle Ages, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
"Philanthropy," "charity," and related concepts were well known to late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Rulers, wealthy individuals and, early on, the Christian church founded hospitals, distributed food, and established forms of relief for the needy of various sorts throughout the period. The problem comes in interpreting these activities, their motives, and their goals. Is the philanthropia of a pre-Christian philosopher of a piece with the agape, or Christian love, of a fourth-century bishop? When the Roman emperor provides bread and circuses, what does he intend and why does he do it? Does the twelfth-century nobleman intend the same? As …
Interpretations Of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, And The Just War Tradition (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Interpretations Of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, And The Just War Tradition (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just War Tradition, by Richard B. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, Policraticus, edited and translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson by Terry Godlove. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.