Preface
Acknowledgments
Copyright Permissions
PART I. Redescribing Religion as Something Ordinary
1. More Than a Shapeless Beast: Lumbering through the Academy
with the Study of Religion
2. Redescribing 'Religion' as Social Formation: Toward a Social
Theory of Religion
PART II. Dispatches from the Theory Wars
3. Writing a History of God: "Just the Same Game Wherever
You Go"
4. Explaining the Sacred: Theorizing on Religion in the Late
Twentieth Century
5. "We're All Stuck Somewhere": Taming Ethnocentrism
and Transcultural Understandings
6. The Economics of Spiritual Luxury: The Glittering Lobby
and the World's Parliament of Religions
7. "My Theory of the Brontosaurus...": Postmodernism
and "Theory" of Religion
PART III. Culture Critics and Caretakers
8. A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion
as Public Intellectual
9. Talking Past Each Other: The Issue of Public Intellectuals
Revisited
PART IV. Going Public: Teaching Theory
10. Our "Special Promise" as Teachers: Scholars of
Religion and the Politics of Tolerance
11. Redescribing "Religion and..." Film: Teaching
the Insider/Outsider Problem
12. Methods and Theories in the Classroom: Teaching the Study
of Mythis and Rituals
13. Theorizing in the Introductory Course: A Survey of Resources
PART V. Afterword
Afterword
References
Index