Religion: Empirical Studies

Dr Steven Sutcliffe was recently Research Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Stirling, UK, and has taught in Religious Studies at the University of Sunderland and the Open University.

Contents: Foreword, Peggy Morgan; Introduction: Qualitative empirical methodologies: an inductive argument, Steven J. Sutcliffe. Part One Category And Method: Phenomenology, fieldwork and folk religion, Marion Bowman; Media, meaning and method in the study of religion, Chris Arthur; How to study religious experience in the traditions, Peter Antes; 'The Sacred' as a viable concept in the contemporary study of religions, Terence Thomas; The sense and nonsense of 'community': a consideration of contemporary debates about community and culture by a scholar of religion, Kim Knott; Chosen people: the concept of diaspora in the modern world, Gerrie ter Haar; Study of Religions: The New Queen of the Sciences?, Brian Bocking. Part Two Case Studies: Religious Experience in Early Buddhism?, Richard Gombrich; Women and goddesses in the Celtic world, Miranda Aldhouse-Green; Religion, gender and Dharma: the case of the widow-Asceti, Julia Leslie; A Buddhist-Christian encounter in Sri Lanka: the Panadura Vada, Ria Kloppenborg; Religion and community in indigenous contexts, Armin W. Geertz; African spirituality, religion and innovation, Elizabeth Amoah; Unificationism: a study in religious syncretism, George D. Chryssides; Multiculturalism, Muslims and the British state, Tariq Modood. Afterword: separating religion from the 'sacred': methodological Agnosticism and the future of religious studies, James L. Cox. Index.