Thinking About Religion: A Reader

Part I: The Quest for Natural Religion.

1. Herbert’s Prayer: Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

2. Common Notions concerning Religion: Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

3. The Natural History of Religion: David Hume.

4. Hume's Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion: Robert A. Segal.

Part II: Biblical Criticism and the Critique of Religion.

5. The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus: Ernest Renan.

6. The Historical System of Ernest Renan: Georges Sorel.

7. A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise: Baruch de Spinoza.

8. The Bible and Religion in a Century of Genius: Part III: The Hidden Dialogue of Spinoza's Tractatus: J. Samuel Preus.

Part III: The Shock of the Old: Max Müller’s Search for the Soul of Europe.

9. Preface to Chips from a German Woodshop: Friedrich Max Müller.

10. On the Philosophy of Mythology: Friedrich Max Müller.

11. Forgotten Bibles: Friedrich Max Müller.

12. Müller on the Science of Religion: William Dwight Whitney.

Part IV: The Shock of the “Savage”: Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution and Spirits.

13. Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern: Edward Burnet Tylor.

14. The Religion of Savages: Edward Burnet Tylor.

15. Primitive Culture: Edward Burnet Tylor.

16. Edward Burnett Tylor and the Mission of Primitive Man: George W. Stocking.

Part V: Evolution in the Religion of the Bible: William Robertson Smith.

17. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: William Robertson Smith.

18. Renan's Histoire du Peuple D'Israel: William Robertson Smith.

19. William Robertson Smith: James George Frazer.

Part VI: Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James George Frazer.

20. The Golden Bough: James George Frazer.

21. Outcast from the Islands: Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Modern Anthropology: George W. Stocking.

Part VII: From Evolution to Religious Experience: Phenomenology of Religion.

22. The Meaning of Religion: Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion: William Brede Kristensen.

23. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: Bronislaw Malinowski.

24. The Idea of the Holy: Rudolf Otto.

25. Towards a Theory of the Configurations of Religion: Ninian Smart.

Part VIII: Religious Experience Creates the World of the Modern Economy: Max Weber.

26. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Max Weber.

27. Capitalism and Protestantism: Sidney Hook.

28. Religion and Development: Weber and the East Asian Experience: Winston Davis.

Part IX: Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion.

29. The Future of an Illusion: Sigmund Freud.

30. Sigmund Freud: Karl Menninger.

31. The Neurosis of Civilization: Henry Hazlitt.

32. Freud: The Mind of a Moralist: Philip Rieff.

Part X: Malinowski and Functionalism: Religion is What Religion Does.

33. Magic, Science and Religion: Bronislaw Malinowski.

34. Souvenir of Malinowsky: Claude Lévi-Strauss.

35. Anthropology and the Science of the Irrational: Malinowski's Encounter with Freudian Psychoanalysis: George W. Stocking.

Part XI: Seeing the Sacred with the Social Eye: Émile Durkheim’s “Religious Sociology”.

36. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: Émile Durkheim.

37. Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena: Émile Durkheim.

38. Contribution to Discussion “Religious Sentiment at the Present Time”: Émile Durkheim.

39. Individualism and Intellectuals: Émile Durkheim.

40. Pragmatism and Protestantism in the Development of Durkheim's Sociology of Religion: Robert Alun Jones.

Part XII: Mircea Eliade: The “Worm of Doubt” Turns.

41. Patterns in Comparative Religion: Mircea Eliade.

42. Crisis and Renewal: Mircea Eliade.

43. Cosmogonic Myth and "Sacred History”: Mircea Eliade.

44. Mircea Eliade: Apolgia pro Opere suo: Bryan Rennie.

Index