The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Preface: a dispatch from the provinces......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 23
Introduction......Page 26
Genealogy of credibility......Page 38
Form, content, and the treasury of devices......Page 40
God's people defending their ivory towers: reassessing the study of religion's emergence in the U.S.......Page 63
Autonomy, unity, and crisis: rhetoric and the invention of a discipline......Page 79
Classification and the dog's breakfast: the American Academy of Religion's research interest survey......Page 108
Techniques of dominance......Page 124
The good, the bad, and the ugly: looking past the violence of cults and fanatics......Page 126
Alienation, apprenticeship, and the crisis of academic labor......Page 152
~Like small bumps on the back of the neck  ~: the problem of evil as something ordinary......Page 171
The jargon of authenticity and the study of religion......Page 192
Reworking the residue from our imperfect past......Page 214
Methods, theories, and the terrors of history: closing the Eliadean era with some dignity......Page 216
The perfect past and the irony of narrative: Bruce Lincoln's Theorizing Myth......Page 238
~Religion~ and the citizen's unrequited desires: chips from the religion industry's workshop......Page 255
~Religion~ and the governable self......Page 277
Afterword......Page 316
References......Page 319
Index......Page 338