Description
For this discussion board, before you begin formulating your response, think about how the term “world religions” has been used and deployed. Look at the structure of this course, the textbook, and the various aspects of religion highlighted in the first chapter. For this prompt, articulate what organizing principle(s) you notice in the textbook and course structure. Are the religions organized by time period? Geographic location? Number of adherents? Influence? Some other organizing method? Also, what religions get included and what religions get excluded from the category and why? How do the organizational principles and inclusion/exclusion of certain religions reflect a particular understanding of the term “world religions”? If you are stumped, you may wish to skim through Tomoko Masuzawa’s book, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism on Google BooksLinks to an external site.. Masuzawa points to different ways the term has been understood. Her Introduction may be very helpful for your post.The bibliographic information for Masuzawa’s book is:Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions, Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2005. Print.This discussion post has two parts. In the first part, summarize the definition of religion given by Freud, Durkheim, or Otto in the primary text readings. Be sure to include what they focus on in their definition and what makes it different from the others. In the second part, keeping in mind all the definitions we have covered this week, craft your own definition of religion. It is not enough to be critical of other’s attempts to define religion, we have to be critical of our own.