Timothy Stanley

Meeting Times: Mon, 12-12.50pm lecture (Basement Lecture Theatre, Simon Building), Mon 1-1.50pm and Wed 12-12.50pm seminars (room and group assignments will be handed out in the first lecture)

Instructor: Dr. Timothy Stanley, timothy.stanley@manchester.ac.uk, Samuel Alexander WG20b

Office Hours: Mondays 2-3pm & Wednesdays 1-2pm

Readings: All of the required reading for the seminars for this course can be found in two sources: 1) a textbook, Guide to the Study of Religion edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, London: Cassell, 2000; and 2) a course reading pack. The textbook can be purchased from Blackwells bookshop in the Precinct Centre on campus, and the course reader can be purchased for £5 from the school office (Samuel Alexander A6). The assigned readings should be read in advance and you should be prepared to discuss the reading within each day’s seminar.

Course requirements:

• 1 x 1,500 word formative essay (due
• 1 x 2,500 word summative essay (40% due Fri 18 Dec)
• 20 x daily participation (20%)
• 1 x 2 hour unseen exam (40% due exam period TBA)

Syllabus All in One PDF

Click to read more ...

• Lecture Mon 28/09 12-12.50pm Orientation Lecture (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 28/09 1-1.50pm Meeting your tutor and discussing the film clip from The Darjeeling Limited
• Seminar Wed 30/09 12-12.50pm Braun, Willi. “Religion.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 3-18. In what manner is the term religion "a phantom like category," a spectre? What is the aim of the authors of the articles in this book? (p.9)

• Lecture Mon 5/10 12-12.50pm What is the comparative study of religion? Must it be reductive? (Dr. Alan Williams)
• Seminar Mon 5/10 1-1.50pm Arnal, William E. “Definition.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 21-34. How can we study religion when there are so many different definitions of what it is? What does Arnal mean when he says that “‘Religion’… may be an obstacle to cross-cultural (including cross-temporal) understanding?” (p. 32)
• Seminar Wed 7/10 12-12.50pm Paden, William E. “Some Traditional Strategies of Comparison.” inReligious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994, pp. 15-34. What are “the three most pervasive comparative stances found in the West?” How do these stances relate to each other, e.g. how did deism foster universalism? (p.30ff) What are their strengths and weaknesses?

• Lecture Mon 12/10 12-12.50pm Critical Reading and Library Skills (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 12/10 1-1.50pm Marx, Karl. “Contributions to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.” inCritique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp.129-142. What does Marx mean by the term religion? Why does he think that the critique of religion is the prerequisite of all other critique? (p. 131)
• Seminar Wed 14/10 12.12.50pm Freud, Sigmund. “The Future of an Illusion.” in The Freud Reader,edited by Peter Gay. London: Vintage, 1995, pp. 700-710. What does Freud mean by the term religion? Why does Freud consider religious doctrines to be “illusions?” (p. 704ff)

• Lecture Mon 19/10 12-12.50pm Interpreting Religion (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 19/10 1-1.50pm Penner, Hans. “Interpretation.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000. pp. 57-71. According to Dilthey, “how do we explain the claims of universal truth if lived experience, subjectivity or consciousness is constituted by history, language and culture?” What reasons does Penner give for why Dilthey’s hermeneutics don’t necessarily lead to relativism? (p.62ff) What does Penner believe are the “three fundamental assumptions in the history of hermeneutics that remain central to the study of religion?” (p. 65ff)
• Seminar Wed 21/10 12-12.50pm Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as a Cultural System.” in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, 4th ed., edited by William A Lessa, Evon Z Vogt. London: Harper & Row, 1979, pp. 78-8 What is a cultural symbol and how does it relate to the structure of cultural “common sense” and a worldview? How would you apply Geertz’s method to the study of religion? What are the strengths and weaknesses of his approach?

• Lecture Mon 26/10 12-12.50pm Essay Writing (Dr. Alan Williams)
• Seminar Mon 26/10 1-1.50pm Cunningham, Andrew, and Grell, Ole Peter. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse : Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp.1-18. How can an understanding of the “Four Horsemen” help us interpret and better understand religion in early modern European history? How was the worldview of early modern Europe lost? (p. 2)
• Seminar Wed 28/10 12-12.50pm "Esther," in The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Anglicized Edition (Oxford: OUP, 1995), pp.456-63. Clines, David JA. “Reading Esther From Left to Right: Contemporary Strategies for Reading a Biblical Text.” In The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, edited by David JA Clines et al. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990, pp. 31-52. Briefly discuss the five methods of interpretation (hermeneutics) that Clines delineates in this reading (Formalist, Structuralist, Feminist, Materialist, Deconstructionist). Which do you find the most useful for interpreting the book of Esther?

No Sessions. This week (2/11-6/11) is a break to catch up on reading and focus on completing your formative essay.

• Lecture Mon 9/11 12-12.50pm Religious Myth (Dr. Alan Williams)
• Seminar Mon 9/11 1-1.50pm McCutcheon, Russell T. “Myth.” In Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 190-208. Discuss the various approaches to myth which McCutcheon outlines (p190-99). How does he reconceive mythmaking as social formation?
• Seminar and Essay 1 Due Wed 11/11 12.12.50pm Paden, William. “World.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 334-347. What is a religious world? What issues does Paden raise when evaluating his notion of a religious world? (p. 344ff) Can you think of others?

• Lecture Mon 16/11 12-12.50pm Religious Ritual (Dr. Alan Williams)
• Seminar Mon 16/11 1-1.50pm Grimes, Ronald L. “Ritual.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 259-270. Are all rituals religious? How does Grimes’ brief history of the study of ritual help us answer this question?
• Seminar Wed 18/11 12-12.50pm Bell, Catherine. “Characteristics of Ritual Activities.” in Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp.138-169. What is the distinction Bell makes between ritual and ritualization? How does ritual-like action “create” the sacred? (pp. 157-59) How do the categories of ritual and ritualization help us understand national flags (e.g. in the aftermath of the death of a dignitary or soldier)? (p.156)

• Lecture Mon 23/11 12-12.50pm The Social Construction of Religion (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 23/11 1-1.50pm Mack, Burton L. “Social Formation.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 283-96.What was Marx’s understanding of social formation? (think back to your reading on Marx from week 3 as well) What does Mack define as a Marxist approach to religion? (p.285) “If social formation is a human construct and religion is a semiautonomous practice in the interest of social construction, a study of early Christianities and their myths should complicate the dominant (Weberian and psychological) views of Christian origins sufficiently to make data available for testing alternative theories.” (p. 294ff) Why does Mack believe this to be the case?
• Seminar Wed 25/11 12-12.50pm Stark, Rodney. “Rationality.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 239-58. What is the “intellectual shift taking place in the social-scientific study of religion?” What are the five features of the old paradigm Stark lists? (p. 239ff) And what are the key features of the new paradigm he evinces? (p.244ff) “That religion is harmful at the level of society is a political, not a scientific claim. While the old paradigm was content to identify religion as the opium of the people, the new paradigm notes that religion also often is the ‘amphetamines’ of the people.” (p.251) What are the strengths and weaknesses of his notion of a “religious economy?” (p. 256). 

• Lecture Mon 30/11 12-12.50pm Phenomenology of Religion (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 30/11 1-1.50pm Anttonen, Veikko. “Sacred.” in Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000, pp. 271-282. What are a few key features of a phenomenological approach to the sacred? What does it mean to say Jesus Christ is a zero in Lévi-Straussian terms? (p. 276) What insights does Anttonen gain by bringing a phenomenological approach to the sacred together with cognitive and cultural approaches? Or, asked another way, where do monsters live? (p. 280)
• Seminar Wed 2/12 12-12.50pm Otto, Rudolph. "On Numinous Experience." In Experience of the Sacred: Readings in the Phenomenology of Religion, edited by Wumner B. Twiss and Wlater H. Conser Jr. London: University Press of New England, 1992, pp.77-85. What is so “awe-ful” about numinous experience? What does Otto mean when he says that the wholly other “doesn’t really exist at all?” Would Otto’s analysis help us interpret horror films today? Why or why not?

• Lecture Mon 7/12 12-12.50pm Transcending God? (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 7/12 1-1.50p Ford, David. “Theology.” in The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by John R. Hinnells, London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 61-79. Is theology inevitably inter-religious? Why or why not? Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the five types of theology that Ford lists. What are the possibilities and inadequacies of applying the term theology to other traditions, (e.g. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism)?
• Seminar Wed 9/12 12.12.50pm McGrath, Alistair. “Readings 1.10, 1.15, 1.17, 1.24, 1.29 and 1.30.” inThe Christian Theology Reader, 3rd Edition. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, pp. 19-22, 29-30, 32-33, 45-47, 55-62. These are a series of very brief readings in theology with questions attached to them. Read them all and then, as a group, decide which you’d like to spend the most time discussing. 

• Lecture Mon 14/12 12-12.50pm Review of the Course and Tips for Success on the Exam (Dr. Timothy Stanley)
• Seminar Mon 14/12 1-1.50pm Dawkins, Richard. “What’s Wrong with Religion? Why Be So Hostile?” The God Delusion. London: Black Swan, 2007, pp. 317-48. What does Dawkins mean by the term “religion,” and why does he think it is such a dangerous thing? Why does he believe that “sensible” religion (p. 323) is no antidote to fundamentalism?
• Seminar Wed 16/12 12-12.50pm Eagleton, Terry. “Faith and Reason.” in Reason, Faith and Revolution.New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 109-139. How are statements about the existence of God different than statements about the sexual orientation of goblins? (p. 111) What does he mean by “Theology is a species of materialism?” (p. 129)

Essay 2 Due Fri 18/12 4pm: Essay 2 due 4pm to School Office A6 Participation reflection due 4pm School Office A6

Exam Period: Exam Mon 18 - Fri 29, January 2010 2 hour unseen exam will be scheduled by the exams office. Check you student account for further details.