Bradley L. Herling’s A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion tackles a fundamental question: Is religious studies a discipline in its own right, or simply a topic best approached through interdisciplinary lenses? This book aims to equip students with the necessary tools to understand religious studies as a distinct field of inquiry.
The book’s strength lies in its accessibility. Herling adopts a conversational style, guiding students through complex ideas with clarity and concision. He addresses key figures and concepts, making them understandable to those new to the field.
The book is structured into six chapters and prefaced with an essential overview. Chapter 1 emphasizes the importance of self-consciousness, comparison, defamiliarization, and empathy in evaluating religion’s existential questions and behavioral impact. Chapter 2 introduces social-scientific theory and critiques theological legacies within religious studies. Chapter 3 contrasts personal (Otto, James) and social (Durkheim, Weber, Turner, Geertz) perspectives on religion. Chapter 4 examines Marx and Freud’s rational critiques, Jung, Eliade, and Smart’s phenomenology, and Tillich and Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s theological approaches. Chapter 5 explores contemporary topics like gender, race, globalization, new religions, violence, natural science, and material culture. Chapter 6 concludes with a dialogue between a student and a stranger. Further resources include a bibliography on theory in religious studies and bibliographies on various world religions, as well as a companion website with worksheets.
While the book efficiently covers a broad range of topics, integrating it into a typical undergraduate curriculum presents challenges. Its depth exceeds the scope of introductory world religions textbooks but falls short of a comprehensive theory and methods course. The book’s strength lies in its concise presentation of key aspects of theories and topics, accompanied by discussion questions. A profitable approach might involve using the chapter subsections as introductions to longer readings or pairing them with religious “data” to explore the interplay between theory and practice.
Herling’s A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion offers a welcoming introduction to the field. While the book doesn’t definitively resolve the debate about religious studies as a distinct discipline, it provides students with the tools to navigate the complexities of understanding religion in its multifaceted forms.
