World's Religion Summary

In Peter Clarke & Peter Beyer’s book “The World’s Religions Continuities and Transformations”, there is an entry named ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF RELIGION, where two authors briefly introduced the history of anthropological study of religion. Clarke and Beyer discussed the origin of this study and showed the different approaches and opinions of foregoers for the past two centuries and then gave some future directions that twenty-first-century anthropologists have come up with, which the dominated one is symbolic approaches.

To begin with, two authors demonstrated the core concepts of the study in two centuries. Firstly, in the 19th century, primitive religions was the main topic. By primitive, they mean the researches were mostly conducted within tribes in Africa, Asia and Oceania. And then when it came to 20th century, anthropologists considered religions as results of the interpenetrations of various cultural systems. The academic world has a common view which is religion cannot be simply defined since it’s invisible, intangible and often connected with experience. It’s not an entity which can be read or touched. Unlike antiques, religion are not fixed. Religions are still changing and being influenced by culture systems. Therefore, “Anthropological studies of religion must be balanced, nuanced, and reflective/reflexive in their approach to other cultures.” 1

Then two authors argued about the real origin of this study. Annemarie de Waal Malefijt thought that the origin dated back to 5th century B.C with Greeks and Romans. But most would argue that real beginning was started with Continental European scholars in the 19th century.2 At that time, there were four scholars who had contributed to the modern anthropological studies of religion whose names were Max Muller (1823–1900), William Robertson Smith (1846–94), Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), and James G. Frazer (1854–1941)2. They were not the first to conduct the research, but what made them special was that they were the first to standardize the procedures of the study using scientific methods.

Friedrich Max Muller

He was German and known for his debate with Edward B. Tylor. They debated about the origin of religion and Muller believed that religion came from the fear of natural phenomena, especially the power of the sun. So he described religion as a “disease of language.” Most of his academic contributions were mixed. He has also been criticized for classifying religions.

William Robertson Smith

Smith was born in Scotland and was controversial because he tried to use scientific methods to analyze Old Testament. He was also one of the first scholars who suggested that the nature of religious rites is social, which can strength group integration.