The importance of religion: meaning and action in our strange world

Preface xi    Acknowledgments xv     Introduction: Religion and the Human Condition 1     Mediating Our Strange World 6     Theories of Religion 8     Religion and Religions 12     Defining Religion 14     The Argument 17     Alienation and the Human Condition 17     The Primacy of Perception and the System of Signs 23     The Invisible and the Transcendent 24     The Truths of Religion 26     Conclusion 27     Part One ACTION     1 Clearing the Ground 37     Reification: The Marxist Legacy 40     Rationalization: The Weberian Legacy 44     Knowledge and Action 46     Methodology 49     Conclusion 50     2 The Meaning of Religious Action 53     The Sociology of Religious Meaning 55     Meaning and Action 58     Moral Acts 60     Ritual and the Body 63     A Rite of Affliction 66     The Meaning of Sacrifice 69     A Phenomenology of Sacrifice 71     The Meanings of Death 73     Conclusion 74     3 The Inner Journey 80     Languages of Spirituality 83     The Spiritual Habitus 91     Conclusion 95     Part Two SPEECH     4 The Reception of the Text 101     Routes to the World of Life 102     Theories of the Text 106     The Reception of Sacred Texts 109     Sacred Text and Act 111     Conclusion 113     5 Tradition, Language, and the Self 115     Linguistic Universals 117     Linguistic Relativity 118     Language and Religious Experience 122     Language as a Model of Religion 125     Conclusion 127     6 Religion and Rationality 130     What is Rationality? 131     Rational Religious Communities 139     Rationality and Cosmology 141     Conclusion 146     Part Three WORLD     7 The Mystery of Complexity and Emergence 153     A History of Antagonism 155     Complexity and Constraint 159     The Ontology of Process 164     Conclusion 166     8 The Union of Nature and Imagination 171     Art and the Real 172     Cosmological Art 175     Pavel Florensky 177     Abhinavagupta 178     Secular Art 180     Re-Spiritualizing Art 182     Conclusion 185     9 Religion and Politics 189     Religion in the Public Sphere 190     The Secular Public Sphere 195     The Traditionalist View 197     Fundamentalism 200     The Religious Citizen 201     Conclusion 205     Summary 210     Epilogue 217     References 221     Index 237