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This volume promotes a pragmatic, anti-essentialist and anti-hegemonic approach to the problem of the definition of religion. It argues that definitions of religion are context-bound strategies for pursuing a variety of purposes, extra-academic as well as academic. Religions being immensely varied, complex and multi-functional phenomena, they need to be studied by several academic disciplines from many different perspectives. It is, therefore, legitimate and useful that many definitions of religions are developed. The volume has contributions from scholars in Philosophy of Religion, the Comparative Study of Religions, Anthropology of Religion, Sociology of Religion and Psychology of Religion. It has chapters on the polemics of defining religion in modern contexts, the history of the concept of religion, and the methodology of its definition; it includes several definition proposals.

Religious studies --- Religion --- Philosophy --- Philosophie --- Philosophy. --- 291 --- -Religion, Primitive --- Atheism --- God --- Irreligion --- Religions --- Theology --- Godsdienstwetenschap: vergelijkend --- -Godsdienstwetenschap: vergelijkend --- Religion - Philosophy. --- defining religion --- religion --- study of religion --- secularisation --- tradition --- religious heritage --- psychology of religion --- Wolff --- Edelmann --- Ernst Troeltsch --- religion and social sciences --- religious patterns --- methodology

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Fits, trances, visions, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, possession. Believers have long viewed these and similar involuntary experiences as religious--as manifestations of God, the spirits, or the Christ within. Skeptics, on the other hand, have understood them as symptoms of physical disease, mental disorder, group dynamics, or other natural causes. In this sweeping work of religious and psychological history, Ann Taves explores the myriad ways in which believers and detractors interpreted these complex experiences in Anglo-American culture between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Taves divides the book into three sections. In the first, ranging from 1740 to 1820, she examines the debate over trances, visions, and other involuntary experiences against the politically charged backdrop of Anglo-American evangelicalism, established churches, Enlightenment thought, and a legacy of religious warfare. In the second part, covering 1820 to 1890, she highlights the interplay between popular psychology--particularly the ideas of "animal magnetism" and mesmerism--and movements in popular religion: the disestablishment of churches, the decline of Calvinist orthodoxy, the expansion of Methodism, and the birth of new religious movements. In the third section, Taves traces the emergence of professional psychology between 1890 and 1910 and explores the implications of new ideas about the subconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, and dissociation for the understanding of religious experience. Throughout, Taves follows evolving debates about whether fits, trances, and visions are natural (and therefore not religious) or supernatural (and therefore religious). She pays particular attention to a third interpretation, proposed by such "mediators" as William James, according to which these experiences are natural and religious. Taves shows that ordinary people as well as educated elites debated the meaning of these experiences and reveals the importance of interactions between popular and elite culture in accounting for how people experienced religion and explained experience. Combining rich detail with clear and rigorous argument, this is a major contribution to our understanding of Protestant revivalism and the historical interplay between religion and psychology.

Psychology, Religious. --- Methodism. --- Experience (Religion) --- Methodism --- Psychology, Religious --- Religious experience --- Psychology of religion --- Religion --- Religions --- Religious psychology --- Psychology and religion --- Arminianism --- Church polity --- Dissenters, Religious --- Episcopacy --- Evangelical Revival --- History --- Psychological aspects --- Psychology --- Buddha. --- Emmanuel Movement. --- Magnet, The (Sunderland). --- New Thought. --- Presbyterians, Scottish. --- Puritanism. --- Quakers. --- Theosophy. --- adepts, theosophical. --- agency, human. --- catalepsy. --- clairvoyance. --- consciousness. --- delusions, religious. --- enthusiasm. --- fluids: magnetic. --- hell. --- imagination. --- inspiration. --- mental weakness. --- nervous instability. --- out-of-body experience. --- psychical research. --- race: and congregational makeup. --- shamanism. --- shekinah. --- temple: as biblical type. --- voices. --- Experience (Religion) - History - 18th century --- Psychology, Religious - History - 18th century --- Methodism - History - 18th century --- Experience (Religion) - History - 19th century --- Psychology, Religious - History - 19th century --- Methodism - History - 19th century --- religious and psychological hsitory --- fits --- trances --- visions --- speaking in tongues --- clairvoyance --- out-of-body experiences --- possession --- religious experience --- Anglo-American culture --- Evangelism --- Enlightenment thought --- religious warfare --- professional psychology --- the subconscious mind --- hypnosis --- hysteria --- dissociation --- supernatural phenomena --- religion and nature --- Protestant revivalism