Irreverence and the Sacred brings together some of the most cutting edge, interdisciplinary, and international scholars working today in order to debate key issues in the critical and comparative study of religion. The project is inspired in large part by the work of Bruce Lincoln, whose influential and wide-ranging scholarship has consistently posed challenging, provocative, and often-irreverent questions that have really pushed the boundaries of the field of religious studies in important, sometimes controversial ways. Retracing the history of the discipline of religious studies, Lincoln argues that the field has tended to champion a "validating, feel-good" approach to religion, rather than posing more critical questions about religious claims to authority and their role in history, politics, and social change. A critical approach to the history of religions, he suggests, would focus on the human, temporal, and material aspects of phenomena that are claimed to have a superhuman, eternal, or transcendent status. This volume takes up Lincoln's challenge to "do better," by engaging in critical analyses of four key themes in the study of religion: myth, ritual, gender, and politics. The book also interrogates the "politics of scholarship" itself, critically examining the relations of power and material interests at work in the study as well as the practice of religion. The scholars involved in this project include not only some of the most important figures in the American study of religion--such as Wendy Doniger, Russell McCutcheon, Ivan Strenski, and Lincoln himself--but also European scholars whose work is hugely influential overseas but not as well known in the U.S.--such as Stefan Arvidsson, Claude Calame, Nicolas Meylan, and others.

ContributorsList of ImagesPreface and AcknowledgementsINTRODUCTIONDestabilizing the Sacred: A Critical History of ReligionsHugh B. Urban and Greg JohnsonPART I. MYTH AND NARRATIVE1. (Mythical) Battles in Medieval Scandinavia: Battle Narratives and theConstruction of SocietyNicolas Meylan2. Myth, Third Rome, and the Uses of Ressentiment: An Essay in Myth CriticismIvan Strenski3. How the Arthashastra and the Kamasutra Got Away With Their Critiques ofDharmaWendy Doniger4. Authority Apart from Truth: Superhero Comic Book Stories as MythKevin Wanner5. Myths and Utopias, Critics and Caretakers: In Defense of Revisionist HistoryStefan ArvidssonPART II. RITUAL AND PRACTICE6. Ritual, Advocacy, and Authority: The Challenge of Being an Irreverent WitnessGreg Johnson7. Death, Nationalism, and Sacrifice: Ritual, Violence, Politics, and Tourism inNortheast IndiaHugh B. Urban8. Becoming ZarathustraJean KellensPART III. GENDER AND SEXUALITY9. Where Men are Knights and Women are Princesses: Gender Ideology in Brazil's Valley of the DawnKelly E. Hayes10. Straightening Out the Gods' GenderKathleen Self11. Norn, Vampire, Female Christ: Myth and Myth-Making in Sweden's FirstFeminist NovelStefanie von SchnurbeinPART IV. POWER, POLITICS, AND THE POLITICS OF SCHOLARSHIP12. Historicizing the Elephant in the RoomRussell T. McCutcheon13. What is Religion? Between Christocentric Paradigm and Anthropological RelativismClaude Calame14. Rereading Charlie Hebdo: Of Irreverence and LaïcitéS. Romi MukherjeeAfterword: An Interview with Bruce Lincoln on Religion, Comparison, and the Politics of ScholarshipIndex