Guide To The Phenomenology Of Religion

Provides an introduction and overview to the Phenomenology of Religion through describing, analysing and evaluating the ideas of key thinkers in the phenomenology of religion. This book also examines the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American 'schools' of religious phenomenology. The phenomenological method in the study of religions has provided the linchpin supporting the argument that Religious Studies constitutes an academic discipline in its own right and thus that it is irreducible either to theology or to the social sciences. This book examines the figures whom the author regards as having been most influential in creating a phenomenology of religion. Background factors drawn from philosophy, theology and the social sciences are traced before examining the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American schools of religious phenomenology.