Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story

by Jack Miles

Overview

A brief, beautiful invitation to the study of religion from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

How did our forebears begin to think about religion as a distinct domain, separate from other activities that were once inseparable from it? Starting at the birth of Christianity—a religion inextricably bound to Western thought—Jack Miles reveals how the West’s “common sense” understanding of religion emerged and then changed as insular Europe discovered the rest of the world. In a moving postscript, he shows how this very story continues today in the hearts of individual religious or irreligious men and women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324002789
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/12/2019
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	369,562
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jack Miles is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Religious Studies with the University of California at Irvine and Senior Fellow for Religious Affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy. He spent 1960-1970 as a Jesuit seminarian, studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before enrolling at Harvard University, where he completed a Ph.D. in Near Eastern languages in 1971. His book God: A Biography won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996. Its sequel Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God led to his being named a MacArthur Fellow for 2003-2007. The third in this trilogy, God in the Qur'an, was published in 2018. Miles is general editor of The Norton Anthology of World Religions and, most recently, the author of Religion As We Know It: An Origin Story.

Editorial Reviews

…a quick, sophisticated dash through world history, especially Western history…Readers intrigued with the questions Miles raises will find his new book, and especially his "concluding unscholarly postscript," filled with a prominent scholar's provocative insights.

The New York Times Book Review - Elaine Pagels

★ 08/19/2019

Miles (God: An Autobiography), emeritus professor of religious studies at the University of California at Irvine, asks readers in this shrewd analysis to consider not only religion “as we know it” but also how the definition of the word religion shapes a collective understanding of it. Miles argues that early Christians’ separation of religious adherence from ethnicity and culture was a novel reconceptualization—one that Medieval European Christians, Jews, and Muslims turned into a lens for understanding other religions, even as it distorted them. Secularization and the introduction of new critical fields, such as “Sanskrit Studies,” in the 18th and 19th centuries allowed European and American thinkers to frame a discipline of comparative world religions in which “the religiously unknown and therefore incomparable” could “become known and comparable.” In Miles’s estimation, these frameworks for scholarship established by Western academics were insufficient for understanding many world religions, and he argues that current global standards for scholarship are still based on this limited foundation. Miles also positions the co-operation of Buddhist, Daoist, and Hindu leaders at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions as a watershed moment for a scholarship built on these flawed concepts—revealing the dominance of Western conceptions of religion that persists in religious studies. Miles’s provocative thesis is powerful and unsettling. Any student of theology will be enlightened by this deeply satisfying work. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

This is an exceptional work that challenges and rewards careful reading and thought. It belongs in every library.

Booklist (starred review)

The question of the origin of religion has rarely been addressed with the erudition and eloquence of Jack Miles. Drawing on a remarkable wealth of sources across time and place, he offers much for us to ponder in an essay that is at once highly learned and deeply personal.

Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Jack Miles has written the perfect first book for religious studies beginners. He starts with the widely held American understanding of religion but ends arguing brilliantly that inescapable human ignorance creates the possibility of welcoming the new, the unexpected, even the religious. Our self-absorbed age needs this book.

Mark C. Taylor

2019-09-11
Why religion is seen as an activity all its own.

Pulitzer Prize winner Miles (Emeritus, English and Religious Studies/Univ. of California, Irvine; God in the Qur'an, 2018, etc.) presents a slim volume drawn from his work as general editor of The Norton Anthology of World Religions. Miles sets out to explain the process by which the West, and then the world, came to see "religion" as a distinct activity which could be observed, categorized, and studied apart from language, culture, and other aspects of society. After an unnecessarily long introduction—at roughly one-fifth the length of the book, the preface wears out its welcome—the author examines the idea of religion, an ill-defined yet universal concept, which he and the Norton Anthology approach through the aspect of practice rather than "belief." He moves on to note that until the advent of Christianity, there was no sense of religion as we understand it today. "Religious" practices could not be divorced from one's culture and/or ethnicity. However, as Christianity took aspects of Judaism and transferred them into a proselytizing, transcultural movement, the Christian faith became something unique. Eventually, Islam would do much the same thing. As Christendom came to dominate Western thought, Europeans increasingly saw other faith traditions from a Christian viewpoint and thus imposed the idea of "religion" on cultures where such forms of practice had hitherto been inseparable from other aspects of life. With time, this view spread and became a worldwide phenomenon. Within this global story, Miles succinctly encapsulates what is essentially the history of religious studies, including particular scholars and authors who made surprisingly vast contributions to the world's understanding of religion. The author's use of his own personal story in this already-small volume is not particular helpful. However, his presentation of a fascinating and rarely understood background to modernity's way of thinking is worth the read.

A brief but beneficial guide to where "religion as we know it" comes from.

Kirkus Reviews

11/01/2019

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Miles (God: A Biography) provides an inquiry into religion in this latest work that attempts to explore its origin. The beginnings of how religion came to distinguish itself from other aspects of human life is succinctly described and explained. In American thought, religion became understood in a pluralistic way; there are many different religions that have some comparability to one another. The perception of religion has changed over time and across societies, explains Miles. The birth of Christianity and break with Judaism pushed a secular assumption in modern thought and practice. Miles uses his advanced knowledge of this subject to pose the question of "what exactly defines religion," arguing that there is no definition that currently is generally accepted. The phrase "as we know it" in the title of this work refers to religion "as we talk about it." Miles attempts to study and analyze the concept of religion, not define it further. VERDICT A challenging discourse into the foundations of religion as a separate idea and topic of study. Scholars and students of theology will benefit most from the thought-provoking concepts presented throughout.—Gary Medina, El Camino Coll., Torrance, CA

Library Journal

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