{"id":1340,"date":"2013-07-05T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T10:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/history-myth-and-genuine-religion.html"},"modified":"2013-07-05T10:23:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T10:23:00","slug":"history-myth-and-genuine-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/history-myth-and-genuine-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"History, Myth, and Genuine Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div style=\"background-color: white;line-height: 24px;padding: 0px 0px 15px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">For centuries, European Christians (and their American descendants) mostly categorized religious systems according to their similarities and differences\u00a0<em>vis<\/em>-\u00e0-<em>vis<\/em>Christianity. There were monotheistic or highly evolved religions versus \u201cprimitive\u201d or \u201cidolatrous\u201d religions. There were universal religions versus ethnic, narrow-minded religions (that formulation demoted Judaism in comparison with the previous sentence). Some of those taxonomic schemes suggested a positive appraisal of other religious systems, but only to the extent that they resembled Christianity. [The above mostly represents a very loose and incomplete summary of Jonathan Z. Smith\u2019s brilliant essay, \u201cReligion, Religions, Religious.\u201d]<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;line-height: 24px;padding: 0px 0px 15px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">Given that nearly all scholars of religion are aware of the way that Europeans imposed definitions of religion on other peoples, it is surprising that one encounters with some frequency scholars who repeat the condescension of their predecessors. I\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2012\/08\/monotheism-and-religious-pluralism\/\" style=\"color: #0066cc\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">posted on this phenomenon<\/a>\u00a0last August but was reminded of it again this past week.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;line-height: 24px;padding: 0px 0px 15px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">This summer I\u2019m teaching the equivalent of World Religions for the first time. Throughout July, I will be an \u201canxious\u201d contributor to this blog. Perhaps <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhism<\/a> will help, with its suggestion that such anxiety can indeed be overcome.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: white;line-height: 24px;padding: 0px 0px 15px\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif\">Read the rest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/07\/history-myth-and-genuine-religion\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For centuries, European Christians (and their American descendants) mostly categorized religious systems according to their similarities and differences\u00a0vis-\u00e0-visChristianity. There were monotheistic or highly evolved religions versus \u201cprimitive\u201d or \u201cidolatrous\u201d religions. There were universal religions versus ethnic, narrow-minded religions (that formulation demoted Judaism in comparison with the previous sentence). Some of those taxonomic schemes suggested a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>History, Myth, and Genuine Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For centuries, European Christians (and their American descendants) mostly categorized religious systems according to their similarities and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/history-myth-and-genuine-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"History, Myth, and Genuine Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For centuries, European Christians (and their American descendants) mostly categorized religious systems according to their similarities and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/history-myth-and-genuine-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-07-05T10:23:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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