Kevin Schilbrack teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Western Carolina University, situated in the gorgeous mountains of North Carolina, USA. A graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and an award-winning teacher, he has published widely on the conceptual and philosophical issues that arise in the cross-cultural study of religions. He is the contributing editor of Thinking through Myths (2002) and Thinking through Rituals (2004) 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

Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto advocates a radical transformation of the discipline from its current, narrow focus on questions of God, to a fully global form of critical reflection on religions in all their variety and dimensions. 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