• Opens the discipline of philosophy of religion to the religious diversity that characterizes the world today
• Builds bridges between philosophy of religion and the other interpretative and explanatory approaches in the field of religious studies
• Provides a manifesto for a global approach to the subject that is a practice-centred rather than a belief-centred activity
• Gives attention to reflexive critical studies of 'religion' as socially constructed and historically located

Kevin Schilbrack is Professor and Head of Department of Religion and Philosophy at Western Carolina University. Schilbrack has served as president of the American Academy of Religion for the Southeast, as a senior fellow with Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and as a participant in a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Development Seminar in Taiwan and Thailand. An award-winning teacher, he has published numerous articles in philosophy and theory of religion, and is the contributing editor of Thinking through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives (2007) and The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religious Diversity (forthcoming).

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xix

Chapter 1: The Full Task of Philosophy of Religion 1

i. What is “Traditional Philosophy of Religion”? 3

ii. The First Task of Philosophy of Religion 10

iii. The Second Task of Philosophy of Religion 14

iv. The Third Task of Philosophy of Religion 19

v. What is the Big Idea? 24

Bibliographic Essay 25

Endnotes 27

Chapter 2: Are Religious Practices Philosophical? 29

i. Toward a Philosophy of Religious Practice 31

ii. Embodiment as a Paradigm for Philosophy of Religion 33

iii. Conceptual Metaphors and Embodied Religious Reason 36

iv. Religious Material Culture as Cognitive Prosthetics 40

v. A Toolkit for the Philosophical Study of Religious Practices 47

Bibliographic Essay 49

Endnotes 51

Chapter 3: Must Religious People Have Religious Beliefs? 53

i. The Place of Belief in the Study of Religions 55

ii. Objections to the Concept of Religious Belief 57

iii. Holding One’s Beliefs in Public 61

iv. What We Presuppose When We Attribute Beliefs 66

v. The Universality of Belief 70

Bibliographic Essay 76

Endnotes 80

Chapter 4: Do Religions Exist? 83

i. The Critique of “Religion” 85

ii. The Ontology of “Religion” 89

iii. Can There be Religion Without “Religion”? 92

iv. “Religion” as Distortion 96

v. The Ideology of “Religion” 101

Bibliographic Essay 105

Endnotes 110

Chapter 5: What Isn’t Religion? 113

i. Strategies for Defining Religion 115

ii. Making Promises: The Functional or Pragmatic Aspect of Religion 121

iii. Keeping Promises: The Substantive or Ontological Aspect of Religion 127

iv. The Growing Variety of Religious Realities 129

v. What this Definition Excludes 135

Bibliographic Essay 141

Endnotes 147

Chapter 6: Are Religions Out of Touch With Reality? 149

i. Religious Metaphysics in a Postmetaphysical Age 151

ii. Antimetaphysics Today 154

iii. Constructive Postmodernism and Unmediated Experience 158

iv. Unmediated Experience and Metaphysics 163

v. The Rehabilitation of Religious Metaphysics 167

Bibliographic Essay 171

Endnotes 172

Chapter 7: The Academic Study of Religions: a Map With Bridges 175

i. Religious Studies as a Tripartite Field 177

ii. Describing and Explaining Religious Phenomena 180

iii. Evaluating Religious Phenomena 185

iv. Do Evaluative Approaches Belong in the Academy? 189

v. Interdisciplinary Bridges 197

Bibliographic Essay 203

Endnotes 205

Works Cited 207

Index 223