Discursive Study of Religion: Approaches, Defijinitions, Implications

Abstracthe article explores recent approaches to historical analysis of discourse that have been devel-oped in disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and historical epistemology. These approaches have only sporadically been taken seriously in the academic study of religion, although they have a great potential to establish a study of religion that is both academically rig-orous and aware of its societal and historical contexts and limitations. The article defijines the necessary concepts for a discursive study of religion as an hermeneutical discipline that scruti-nizes and historicizes the societal organization of knowledge about religion. This discourse on religion—defijined here as religion—generates, legitimizes, and maintains meaning structures and societal realities. The discourse-historical analysis of religion is not itself a method but a research perspective. Nevertheless, this perspective implies several steps in designing a research project that the article describes with concrete examples.

Keywords:

Religion , Approaches , Defijinitions , Implications , sociology of knowledge.