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Semantics And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis Jan 2018

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 2, Douglas L. Winiarski Jan 2018

Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part 2, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Throughout the bitterly cold month of January 1805, John Meacham (1770-1854), Issachar Bates (1758-1837), and Benjamin Youngs (1774- 1855), struggled through mud and ice, biting winds, blinding snow, and drenching rains, on a 1,200-mile “Long Walk” to the settlements of the trans-Appalachian West. Traveling south toward Cumberland Gap, the three Shaker missionaries from New Lebanon, New York, were tracking a strange new convulsive religious phenomenon that had gripped Scots-Irish Presbyterians during the frontier religious awakening known as the Great Revival (1799-1805). Observers called the puzzling somatic fits “the Jerks.” Ardent supporters of the revivals believed the jerks were a sign …