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Theology

An approach that seeks to understand a religion through its own internal worldview, meanings, teachings, and way of life.

Confessional theology

An approach that teaches the beliefs of one particular religious tradition, school, or sect as the true or correct understanding.

Anselm of Canterbury

Medieval Christian thinker associated with the definition of theology as "faith seeking understanding."

Phenomenology of religion

An approach that attempts to understand and describe religious beliefs, rituals, practices, and experiences from the perspective of those who practice them.

Emic approach

An approach that understands a culture or religion from within the worldview of the people who practice it.

Etic approach

An approach in which an outside observer analyzes a culture or religion using external or scientific concepts.

Insider

A person who is a believer or member of the religious tradition being studied.

Outsider

A scholar or observer who is not a believer or member of the religious tradition being studied.

Insider/Outsider distinction

The distinction between people who belong to a religion and scholars who study it from outside.

Critical theory

An approach that questions whether knowledge is neutral and examines how knowledge is connected to power, politics, society, and ideology.

Three Masters of Suspicion

Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, who challenged the idea that knowledge is neutral and purely rational.

Karl Marx

Thinker who connected knowledge to economic and political ideology.

Sigmund Freud

Thinker who argued that knowledge and behavior can be influenced by the unconscious.

Frankfurt School

A group of German intellectuals associated with the strict definition of critical theory and influenced by Marx and Freud.

Theodor Adorno

Frankfurt School scholar who criticized Western rational thought and helped develop critical theory.

Max Horkheimer

Frankfurt School scholar who helped develop critical theory and co-authored Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Major work by Adorno and Horkheimer that questioned Western rational thought and progress.

Structuralism

An approach that argues underlying structures can be identified in language, myths, society, and the world.

Post-structuralism

An approach arguing that structures and meanings are historically and culturally created rather than permanently fixed.

Michel Foucault

Thinker who examined how knowledge, history, institutions, and political systems are connected to power.

Jacques Derrida

Thinker who argued that language is unstable and that texts contain contradictions and tensions.

Will to power

Nietzsche's idea that knowledge and human activity are connected to struggles over power.

Knowledge is not neutral

The critical theory idea that all knowledge reflects particular viewpoints, assumptions, interests, and forms of power.

Hegemony

The dominance of particular ideas or ways of understanding that become accepted as normal or authoritative.

Religion as a Western category

The idea that the modern concept of "religion" may reflect Western and particularly Christian assumptions rather than being a universal category.

Religion and culture

Critical theory questions the boundary between religion and culture and argues that activities traditionally classified as cultural may also have religious dimensions.

Ritual

Patterned, formal, symbolic action.

Catherine Bell

Scholar who categorized rituals into different types, including rites of passage, calendrical rituals, rites of affliction, and political rituals.

Rites of passage

Rituals that mark a person's movement from one social status or stage of life to another.

Calendrical rituals

Rituals connected to calendars, seasons, or recurring times of the year.

Rites of exchange or communication

Rituals involving communication or exchange with supernatural beings, often through offerings or other actions.

Rites of affliction

Rituals associated with suffering, illness, misfortune, or other forms of affliction.

Political rituals

Rituals that involve political authority, power, identity, or social organization.

Arnold van Gennep

Anthropologist who identified the three-stage pattern of separation, transition, and reintegration in rites of passage.

Separation

The first stage of van Gennep's rite-of-passage model in which a person leaves their previous social status.

Transition

The second stage of van Gennep's rite-of-passage model in which a person is between social statuses.

Reintegration

The final stage of van Gennep's rite-of-passage model in which a person returns to society with a new status.

Victor Turner

Anthropologist who expanded van Gennep's model and emphasized liminality and communitas.

Liminality

The middle, transitional stage of a rite of passage in which a person is between normal social statuses.

Communitas

Turner's term for the strong sense of equality, connection, and togetherness that can develop during the liminal stage.

Bruce Lincoln

Scholar who criticized traditional rite-of-passage models for being more applicable to male than female initiation.

Female initiation model

Lincoln's model of enclosure, metamorphosis or magnification, and emergence.

Richard Schechner

Scholar who argued that whether a performance is considered ritual or theatre depends largely on its context and purpose.

Ritual vs. theatre

Ritual is generally intended to be efficacious or accomplish something, while theatre is primarily intended to entertain, although performances can contain elements of both.

Efficacy

The ability of a ritual or performance to accomplish a desired effect, such as healing, initiation, or transformation.