Religion and the Critical Mind Second Exam Study Guide

Durkheim the sacred and the profane

The sacred is what a community sets apart as special and forbidden to ordinary use; the profane is the everyday. Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices about sacred things that binds people into a moral community. Durkheim treats religion as a social fact: in worshipping the sacred, a society is worshipping itself. This is central to the sociological approach to religion.

Sociology and religious studies

Sociology studies religion as a social phenomenon (its functions, institutions, and effects). Religious studies draws on many methods, including sociology. Debate over whether explaining religion socially "explains it away" or simply adds one useful lens. Be ready to compare insider and outsider approaches.

Civil religion

Shared sacred symbols, rituals, and beliefs of a nation that function like a religion without belonging to one denomination (for example, references to God in presidential speeches, national holidays, founding documents as sacred texts). Connects to Durkheim (society worships itself) and to debates over church-state separation and who is included in the "national faith."

"Neurasthenia," mental health, and American culture, 1880-1920

A diagnosis of "nervous exhaustion" popularized by George Beard, blamed on the pace and stress of modern industrial life. Links medical ideas about the mind to religious responses (mind-cure, New Thought, William James's interest in healing and religious experience). It shows how Americans sought spiritual and psychological remedies for modernity's strain.

New Thought

A 19th-20th century American movement holding that mind and thought shape reality, health, and success; also called mind-cure. Ties to neurasthenia (a cure for nervousness), American individualism, and later positive-thinking and prosperity teachings. James discussed this "healthy-minded" religion.

Early Pentecostalism in context

A Christian movement emphasizing baptism in the Holy Spirit, signified by speaking in tongues, healing, and direct spiritual experience. Grew among the poor and marginalized, was unusually interracial at first, and challenged formal, educated religion. Connect to religious experience, race, class, and American individualism.

Glossolalia

"Speaking in tongues": ecstatic, language-like speech, understood by believers as a gift of the Spirit (compare Acts 2). Debates over whether it is a real language, a spiritual gift, or a learned or psychological phenomenon. Connect to Pentecostalism, religious experience, and Luhrmann's work on how religious practice shapes experience.

Islam, "Interreligious Heritage," "Shared Ethics"

• General background: Islam shares prophets, scriptures, and ethical teachings (charity, justice, care for the neighbor) with Judaism and Christianity. Likely framed as common ground for interreligious dialogue and a counter to "clash" narratives.

Pragmatism

A philosophy that judges ideas by their practical effects (their "cash value" in experience). Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey. James applied it to religion (The Varieties of Religious Experience, "The Will to Believe"): religious belief can be judged by its fruits in a person's life, not just by proof. Connect to Pals on James.

The politics of respectability

Strategy, especially among Black churchwomen in the early 20th century, of adopting dominant moral and behavioral standards (temperance, cleanliness, propriety) to claim dignity and challenge racism. Key name: Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Righteous Discontent). Debate over whether respectability empowered communities or reinforced the very norms that oppressed them. Connect to race, gender, class, and the church as a political space.

Ritual

Repeated, patterned, symbolic actions that express and shape belief and community. Debates over whether ritual expresses belief or creates it, whether it is about meaning or social bonding (Durkheim), and how to define it at all. Use your class readings for the specific theorists.

Vatican II

The Second Vatican Council (1962-65), called by Pope John XXIII to update (aggiornamento) the Catholic Church. Key changes: Mass in local languages, greater role for the laity, openness to other Christians and religions (Nostra Aetate), support for religious freedom. Why it matters: Opened the door to liberation theology and renewed Catholic engagement with social justice, and fueled debates between reformers and traditionalists.

Liberation theology

Theology, rooted in Latin America, that reads the Gospel as demanding justice for the poor and oppressed. Key names/ideas: Gustavo Gutiérrez, Medellín (1968), "preferential option for the poor," base communities, theology as reflection on action (praxis). Why it matters: Connected to Vatican II; sparked conflict with church authorities over politics and Marxist analysis. Links to feminist, womanist, and mujerista theologies.

Feminist, womanist, and mujerista theology

• Feminist theology: Critiques male-dominated language, leadership, and interpretation in religion (for example, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Mary Daly).

• Womanist theology: Centers the experiences of Black women, addressing race, gender, and class together (Alice Walker coined "womanist"; Delores Williams, Katie Cannon).

• Mujerista theology: Centers Latina women's everyday lived experience (lo cotidiano) (Ada María Isasi-Díaz).

• Why it matters: Shows how theology changes when it starts from different social positions, and critiques the claim that earlier feminist theology spoke for all women.

The Highlander Folk School and Civil Rights

• A Tennessee school founded in 1932 (Myles Horton and others) that trained labor and civil rights activists.

• Key links: Rosa Parks attended in 1955; the song "We Shall Overcome" spread through Highlander; its citizenship school model; visits by Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Why it matters: Shows how religion, education, and organizing worked together in the Civil Rights movement.

Engaged Buddhism

• Buddhism applied to social and political action, not only personal meditation.

• Key name: Thich Nhat Hanh (associated with the term, formed in the context of the Vietnam War).

• Why it matters: Challenges the stereotype of Buddhism as withdrawn from the world and connects to compassion in action, nonviolence, and comparison with Christian social justice movements.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and "prophetic" religion

• Religion that, like the Hebrew prophets, speaks out against injustice and calls the nation to moral account.

• Key texts/ideas: "Letter from Birmingham Jail," nonviolence, the "beloved community," biblical prophets such as Amos.

• Why it matters: Contrasts with religion that supports the status quo (compare civil religion and respectability) and shows religion as a force for social change.

Buddhist rituals

• General: chanting, meditation, offerings, bowing, merit-making, monastic ceremonies.

• Why it matters: Ties to the broader debate on defining ritual, and to differences between Buddhist traditions.

Mahayana vs. Theravada Buddhism

• Theravada: "Way of the elders"; relies on the Pali Canon; ideal is the arhat (one who attains enlightenment); dominant in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

• Mahayana: "Great vehicle"; additional scriptures; ideal is the bodhisattva (delays nirvana to help all beings); emphasis on compassion and emptiness; dominant in East Asia.

• Why it matters: Shows internal diversity within Buddhism and different ideas of the path and its goal.

Five Pillars of Islam

1. Shahada: declaration of faith

2. Salat: ritual prayer five times daily

3. Zakat: almsgiving

4. Sawm: fasting in Ramadan

5. Hajj: pilgrimage to Mecca

• Why it matters: Practice-centered view of Islam (compare ritual) and a shared foundation for Muslims across divisions.

Mestiza spirituality

• Spirituality that grows out of mixed (Indigenous, Spanish, and other) heritage and life on cultural borders.

• Key names: Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera); Jeanette Rodriguez (on Our Lady of Guadalupe and Mexican American women's faith, check your notes).

• Why it matters: Connects to mujerista theology and to questions of identity, hybridity, and religion at the margins.

Valentina Cantori

Leon Wieseltier

Jeanette Rodriguez

Mestiza spirituality, Guadalupe, Latina faith

Tanya Luhrmann

Anthropology of religious experience and practice

Daniel Pals (on Durkheim)

Sociology of religion, sacred and profane

Daniel Pals (on William James)

Sociology of religion, sacred and profane

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Individual religious experience and the mind

William James, pragmatism, New Thought, neurasthenia, glossolalia, Luhrmann

Religion and social justice

MLK and prophetic religion, Highlander, liberation theology, Vatican II, engaged Buddhism

Politics of respectability, womanist, feminist, and mujerista theology, mestiza spirituality, early Pentecostalism

Diversity within and between traditions

Mahayana vs. Theravada, Five Pillars, shared ethics in Islam, Buddhist rituals