Origin, Application, and Position of Phenomenology of Religion
Document Type : pajoohesh
Author
10.22081/jap.2022.72540
Abstract
James L. Cox in his book, An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion (2021), tries to compile and present the latest achievements in this field in a coherent text. This book, which is organized into nine chapters, takes serious readers step by step into a relatively different field of understanding religion and its constituent elements and shows the application of this method in theology. The basis of the phenomenological method of religion is to try to empathically confront the perceptual content of others by suspending our judgment and to look at the phenomenon of religion from the perspective of religious people and allow them to speak for themselves. But our assumptions and beliefs prevent this from happening. This is where the author, using the findings of contemporary phenomenologists, takes steps to understand religion that is unique in its kind. In the final chapter of the book, Cox addresses the detailed critiques of the phenomenology of religion, responds to three critiques, and finally shows how the phenomenology of religion is intertwined with the emerging field of the cognitive sciences of religion and flourishes. The author's sympathetic view of the Abrahamic religions, especially Islam and the references to the Holy Qur'an, is very interesting.
Keywords
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