Class summary for Tues, Sept. 6, provided by Prof Albert
We began class today by drawing out some of the key terms from the Nasr reading. They are posted to a class Jamboard, and many of them will be posted to our class Jamboard.
We then considered our two authors, Nasr and Ernst, together. Nasr provides a broad overview that is very positive, and pretty definitive as well. He tells us what Islam is. Ernst, on the other hand, starts with Religion more generally, and ends up talking a lot about Christianity. He does so because he is making the case that the idea of religion emerges, at a relatively late date, from a European, Christian context, and emphasizes the extent to which that context has shaped how we understand what religion is.
We then had some discussion of why it might be “tempting to regard major concepts such as religion as being universal and applicable in all times and places,” (Ernst 38) but why it will be important for us to constantly be revisiting context: when, who, where, why!
We agreed that thinking of religion as a social construct can be a bit of a mind-bender, particularly for those of us who come to the class with a strong “faith positioning.”