Religion class

Welcome to the first week of discussions. I hope you all enjoy the readings. I will be making the first post every week in order to demonstrate what I think are the most important aspects of the reading. You not restricted to write on the same subject matter that I address, but your posts must provide analysis of the readings and you will be graded for your ability to convey your thoughts in a clear manner with good writing; you will be graded on grammar and spelling as well. I am not concerned with your opinions regarding the reading, as much as I am concerned with how you approach and think about the material we are discussing.
We looked at number of important scholar’s work this week. Russell McCutcheon is a philosopher of religion and is considered one of the foremost authorities on the study of religion. He is often the editor of edited volumes and introductory textbooks for graduate and undergraduate students alike. Margaret Wiener is an anthropologist that studies indigenous forms of religion in Indonesia, whose religious practices as a result of forms of colonialism and Christian Dutch missionary activity, has been labeled witchcraft. We also read Malcolm Lambert’s “Introduction” to his book on medieval heresy, which is very much like Jennifer Deane’s introduction that we will read next week. However, Lambert’s introduction provides a great lead into Richard Kieckhefer’s article on the close relationship between witchcraft and saint veneration in the late medieval period.
I am most interested in seeing how you deal with notions of identity as it relates to issues of heresy, witchcraft, magic, and orthodox Christianity. As Lambert notes, heresy emerged as a way for disparate Christian theologians to unite under an umbrella understanding that orthodoxy was defined in relation to heresy (Lambert 4-5). The desire to repress heresy led directly to the rise of papal authority, inquisitions, crusades, and religious orders (Lambert 5). In relation to Kieckhefer, we can see how heresy and orthodoxy was a blurred distinction even in the late fourteenth century, where whether or not one was understood as a saint or a witch was the result of a localized, or a “microhistorical context” based on non-doctrinal and ambiguous judgments (Kieckhefer 367). Accusations of heresy and witchcraft were therefore categorically imposed identities from authorities, which conversely fashioned the identities of the orthodox by setting them in opposition to the marginalized. As we will see as the semester continues, the categorical distinctions of orthodoxy set against witchcraft and heresy was the result of a particular worldview in which the world was perceived as being filled with invisible other-than-human persons that could function as either helpers or adversaries. As Wiener notes, “humans are everywhere and always embroiled with nonhumans” (Wiener top of third column first page, numbered as page 10). Wiener also states that early anthropologists such as E.B. Tylor and James George Frazer categorically demonstrated delineations between magic, religion, and science (Wiener middle of second column 10). McCutcheon suggests at the end of his article that it may be a problem to claim non-Western cultures as having religion when such cultures have no concept of the term (McCutcheon last two paragraphs).
My questions, then, for the first week’s readings are:
In terms of the Wiener and Kieckhefer articles, are these categories of magic, religion, science, witchcraft, and heresy useful distinctions? Analyzing the other three articles in terms of the McCutcheon article, how does studying religion affect these distinctions, OR what type of affect did colonialism and Christianity have on the study of religion?—or witchcraft, magic, or heresy? For all four articles but particularly the Lambert article, what does the study of religion have to say about how identity is constructed?
You have five hundred words to fashion a post that addresses one or more of these questions or that articulates anything else you found interesting from this week’s readings. Good luck and please notify me immediately if you have any questions.

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