.The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. New
. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. New
York: Knopf, 2006. An exploration of the evolution of the world’s major religious traditions,
written by a popular historian of comparative religion.
Campbell, Joseph, and Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1991. An
investigation of myths, fairy tales, and religious symbols in readable style.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. A book by an
evolutionary biologist and atheist that argues the case against belief in God.
Feierman, Jay, ed. The Biology of Religious Behavior. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO/Praeger,
2009. Explanations of religion that attempt to bridge the gap between religion and science.
Foucault, Michel. Religion and Culture. Ed. Jeremy Carette. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Writings of Foucault that show his lifelong interest in religious topics.
Haught, John, ed. Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Purpose. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2001. A search of major religions to see if they can concur with
science.
Juschka, Darlene, ed. Feminism in the Study of Religion: A Reader. New York: Continuum,
2001. A discussion by feminist scholars of religion from a multicultural perspective.
Lewis-Williams, David. Conceiving God. London: Thames & Hudson, 2010. A study of the
psychological origin of belief in God.
Pals, Daniel L. Eight Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. A very
readable survey of major theories of the origin and purpose of religion, including theories of
Freud, Marx, Eliade, and Evans-Pritchard, with good biographical sketches of the thinkers.
Wright, Robert. The Evolution of God. Boston: Little, Brown, 2009. A tracing of the evolution of
the concept of gods and God.
Film/TV
Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason. (PBS.) A seven-part miniseries, first broadcast in 2006, that
explores the tension between belief and disbelief in religion.
Freud. (Director John Huston; Universal International.) A classic film that sees the young Freud
as a hero in a painful search for new understanding of unconscious motivations.
In Search of the Soul. (BBC.) An examination of Jung’s vision of reality.
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. (PBS.) A six-part presentation on mythology.
The Question of God: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. (PBS.) A four-part miniseries that
examines belief in God through the context of the lives of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis, two
noted intellectuals with sharply divergent views on religious faith.
Internet
American Academy of Religion: http://www.aarweb.org/. Information about conferences, grants,
and scholarships, presented by the primary organization of professors of religion in North
America.
Internet Sacred Text Archive: http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm. An electronic archive of
texts about religion, mythology, and folklore.
The Pluralism Project: http://www.pluralism.org/. An excellent resource for studying the many
religions now present in the United States.
Key Terms
agnosticism
“Not know” (Greek); a position asserting that the existence of God cannot be proven.
animism
From the Latin anima, meaning “spirit,” “soul,” “life force”; a worldview common
among oral religions (religions with no written scriptures) that sees all elements of nature
as being filled with spirit or spirits.
atheism
“Not God” (Greek); a position asserting that there is no God or gods.
deconstruction
A technique, pioneered by Jacques Derrida, that sets aside ordinary categories of analysis
and makes use, instead, of unexpected perspectives on cultural elements; it can be used
for finding underlying values in a text, film, artwork, cultural practice, or religious
phenomenon.
dualism
The belief that reality is made of two different principles (spirit and matter); the belief in
two gods (good and evil) in conflict.
immanent