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Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism After Secularism
Tyler Roberts encourages scholars to abandon rigid conceptual oppositions between "secular" and "religious" to better understand how human beings actively and thoughtfully engage with their worlds and make meaning. The artificial distinction between a self-conscious and critical "academic study of religion" and an ideological and authoritarian "religion," he argues, only obscures the phenomenon. Instead, Roberts calls on intellectuals to approach the field as a site of "encounter" and "response," illuminating the agency, creativity, and critical awareness of religious actors.
To respond to religion is to ask what religious behaviors and representations mean to us in our individual worlds, and scholars must confront questions of possibility and becoming that arise from testing their beliefs, imperatives, and practices. Roberts refers to the work of Hent de Vries, Eric Santner, and Stanley Cavell, each of whom exemplifies encounter and response in their writings as they traverse philosophy and religion to expose secular thinking to religious thought and practice. This approach highlights the resources religious discourse can offer to a fundamental reorientation of critical thought. In humanistic criticism after secularism, the lines separating the creative, the pious, and the critical themselves become the subject of question and experimentation.
To respond to religion is to ask what religious behaviors and representations mean to us in our individual worlds, and scholars must confront questions of possibility and becoming that arise from testing their beliefs, imperatives, and practices. Roberts refers to the work of Hent de Vries, Eric Santner, and Stanley Cavell, each of whom exemplifies encounter and response in their writings as they traverse philosophy and religion to expose secular thinking to religious thought and practice. This approach highlights the resources religious discourse can offer to a fundamental reorientation of critical thought. In humanistic criticism after secularism, the lines separating the creative, the pious, and the critical themselves become the subject of question and experimentation.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2013
2 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Tyler T. Roberts
2 books3 followersDr. Tyler Roberts is Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, where he teaches courses in religions of the Western world, modern religious thought, theory and method in the study of religion, and religion and politics.
After receiving his A.B. in Philosophy and Religion from Brown University, Professor Roberts studied philosophy at Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany, and religion at Harvard University, where he earned his M.T.S. and Th.D. at the Divinity School.
His research interests include the intersection of religious and philosophical thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, the history and politics of the "secular," and the nature and purpose of the academic study of religion. In 1998, he published Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion, which explores Nietzsche's criticisms of religion and Christianity. Since then he has published a number of essays in leading journals, including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and The Journal of Religion. He also has published on philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek, and Stanley Cavell. His second book, Encountering Religion in a Post-Secular Age, will be published by Columbia University Press.
After receiving his A.B. in Philosophy and Religion from Brown University, Professor Roberts studied philosophy at Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany, and religion at Harvard University, where he earned his M.T.S. and Th.D. at the Divinity School.
His research interests include the intersection of religious and philosophical thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, the history and politics of the "secular," and the nature and purpose of the academic study of religion. In 1998, he published Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion, which explores Nietzsche's criticisms of religion and Christianity. Since then he has published a number of essays in leading journals, including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and The Journal of Religion. He also has published on philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek, and Stanley Cavell. His second book, Encountering Religion in a Post-Secular Age, will be published by Columbia University Press.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 7, 2015
This seemed like a book unsure about what it really wanted to be. Of course, that can be put another way, to say it is a book that does not settle with current divisions of the field or discipline and works across the boundaries. I will grant that partly, but I am not wholly convinced. What begins as apparently a critical and constructive work on theory of religion and method in the study of religion turns into an exercise in theology of a sort, but more about other books than about "God" or other candidates for ultimacy. It became less critical and much more cryptical.
(A day later, let me try restating this again: Perhaps the unclarity is more with regard to the intended audience. Initially, it purports to be a book that might be relevant to the entire field of the study of religion, but then it turns into what appears to be an exercise in confessional (a)theology or "minimal theology" or "psychotheology," depending on which of his influences he is discussing. Then the jargon is thick and the discourse not very accessible to a non-initiate like me. There is development through those chapters, but it is hard to discern -- too easy to miss the territory for his different maps of choice.)
The best passage, I thought, was this: "It is perhaps nowhere more evident than in today's study of religion that we academics have failed to take seriously enough Nietzsche's 'yes-saying.' We know how to say no, to decode and demystify, even if, not knowing how to affirm, we are not always able to explain why we should demystify." (236) I think this is right on. But after his initial critique of "locativist" criticism in the study of religion in the first couple of chapters, Roberts doesn't really say a 'yes,' so much as a "now let me talk this other way" - a way which, it seemed to me much of the time, "locativists" could have a field day criticizing. I guess there wasn't enough dialectical connection between his critical and constructive work for me, and the construction just seemed a little arbitrary as a result.
(A day later, let me try restating this again: Perhaps the unclarity is more with regard to the intended audience. Initially, it purports to be a book that might be relevant to the entire field of the study of religion, but then it turns into what appears to be an exercise in confessional (a)theology or "minimal theology" or "psychotheology," depending on which of his influences he is discussing. Then the jargon is thick and the discourse not very accessible to a non-initiate like me. There is development through those chapters, but it is hard to discern -- too easy to miss the territory for his different maps of choice.)
The best passage, I thought, was this: "It is perhaps nowhere more evident than in today's study of religion that we academics have failed to take seriously enough Nietzsche's 'yes-saying.' We know how to say no, to decode and demystify, even if, not knowing how to affirm, we are not always able to explain why we should demystify." (236) I think this is right on. But after his initial critique of "locativist" criticism in the study of religion in the first couple of chapters, Roberts doesn't really say a 'yes,' so much as a "now let me talk this other way" - a way which, it seemed to me much of the time, "locativists" could have a field day criticizing. I guess there wasn't enough dialectical connection between his critical and constructive work for me, and the construction just seemed a little arbitrary as a result.
July 6, 2017
Roberts covers a large amount of territory in this book, surveying various movements within religious studies. While this sweeping view at times sacrifices detail, it is very useful in conveying major voices at work in the field today and addressing the complicated and at times unnecessary separation of theology and religious studies in the university.
September 8, 2017
Roberts's book is a tour de force. If you're a humanistic scholar (or just a human) looking to respond to sorry scientifically reductive views about religiously informed agency, this is it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews