Ivan Strenski is Holstein Family and Community Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, USA. He served as North American editor-in-chief of the international journal Religion from 1979 to 2004, and is the author of numerous books, including Why Politics Can't Be Freed from Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), Émile Durkheim (ed. 2009), The New Durkheim: Essays on Philosophy, Religious Identity and the Politics of Knowledge (2006), Thinking about Religion: A Reader (ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice (2003), and Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism and Social Thought (2002).

Preface to the Second Edition: Understanding, Instead of Just Thinking vii
1 Introduction: Understanding Theories of Religion is Better than Just Being Critical 1
Part I The Prehistory of the Study of Religion: Responses to an Expanding World 7
2 Jean Bodin and Herbert of Cherbury: True Religion, Essential Religion, and Natural Religion 9
3 Understanding Religion Also Began with Trying to Understand the Bible 19
Part II Classic Nineteenth-Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: The Quest for the Origins of Religion in History 31
4 Max Müller, the Comparative Study of Religion, and the Search for Other Bibles in India 33
5 The Shock of the "Savage": Edward Burnett Tylor, Evolution, and Spirits 45
6 The Religion of the Bible Evolves: William Robertson Smith 55
7 Setting the Eternal Templates of Salvation: James Frazer 65
Part III Classic Twentieth-Century Theorists of the Study of Religion: Defending the Inner Sanctum of Religious Experience or Storming It 75
8 Understanding How to Understand Religion: "Phenomenology of Religion" 77
9 How Religious Experience Created Capitalism: Max Weber 93
10 Tales from the Underground: Freud and the Psychoanalytic Origins of Religion 106
11 Bronislaw Malinowski and the "Sublime Folly" of Religion 118
12 Seeing God with the Social Eye: Durkheim's Religious Sociology 129
13 Mircea Eliade: Turning Back the "Worm of Doubt" 142
Part IV Liberation and Post-Modernism: Race, Gender, Post-Colonialism, the Discourse on Power 155
14 From Modernism to Post-Modernism: Mostly Michel Foucault 157
15 Theorizing Religion with Race in Mind: Prophecy or Curiosity? 171
16 Sex/Gender and Women: Feminists Theorizing Religion 189
17 Another "Otherness": Post-Colonial Theories of Religion 216
18 Conclusion: Being "Smart" about Bringing "Religion" Back In 241
Index 254

Featuring comprehensive updates and additions, the secondedition of Understanding Theories of Religion explores thedevelopment of major theories of religion through the works ofclassic and contemporary figures.
* A new edition of this introductory text exploringthe core methods and theorists in religion, spanning thesixteenth-century through to the latest theoretical trends
* Features an entirely new section covering religion andpostmodernism; race, sex, and gender; and religion andpostcolonialism
* Examines the development of religious theories throughthe work of classic and contemporary figures from the history ofanthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology
* Reveals how the study of religion evolved in responseto great cultural conflicts and major historical events
* Student-friendly features include chapterintroductions and summaries, biographical vignettes, a timeline, aglossary, and many other learning aids