Nathan McGovern

Seeing Through Religion is a cutting-edge textbook designed to help students in their study and research of the world's religious traditions. Providing the tools to learn this valuable subject theoretically, McGovern argues that religion isn’t a thing out there in the world; it’s the glasses on your face through which you see the world, shaped by Western history and, in particular, Christianity. By exploring the major religious traditions and comparing stereotypes about them to reality, this textbook establishes how the lens of “religion” systematically distorts our perception of the world. Topics covered include:What is Religion?Colonialism and the Two Faces of OrientalismIslam: Does Fear Imply Difference?Buddhism: A Philosophy or a Religion?Hinduism: A Polytheistic or a Monotheistic Religion?Chinese Religion: What Is It, and Where Can We Find It?Indian Religions: How Can One Religion “Include” Another?Tibetan Buddhism: Is It Still Buddhism?Judaism: A Religion or an Ethnicity?Indigenous Traditions: What Gets Counted as a Religion?Secularism: Can We Put Religion in a Box?How is the way we think about religion influenced by the theology of Martin Luther?How does the Christian paradigm of religion distort our perception of Christianity itself?This textbook not only provides a survey of important religious traditions but also guides the reader on how to study religion in a methodologically sophisticated way. This innovative volume is essential reading for those who want a contemporary and engaging approach to the study of world religions.

Seeing Through Religion is a cutting-edge textbook designed to help students in their study and research of the world's religious traditions. Providing the tools to learn this valuable subject theoretically, McGovern argues that religion isn’t a thing out there in the world; it’s the glasses on your face through which you see the world, shaped by Western history and, in particular, Christianity. By exploring the major religious traditions and comparing stereotypes about them to reality, this textbook establishes how the lens of “religion” systematically distorts our perception of the world. Topics covered include:What is Religion?Colonialism and the Two Faces of OrientalismIslam: Does Fear Imply Difference?Buddhism: A Philosophy or a Religion?Hinduism: A Polytheistic or a Monotheistic Religion?Chinese Religion: What Is It, and Where Can We Find It?Indian Religions: How Can One Religion “Include” Another?Tibetan Buddhism: Is It Still Buddhism?Judaism: A Religion or an Ethnicity?Indigenous Traditions: What Gets Counted as a Religion?Secularism: Can We Put Religion in a Box?How is the way we think about religion influenced by the theology of Martin Luther?How does the Christian paradigm of religion distort our perception of Christianity itself?This textbook not only provides a survey of important religious traditions but also guides the reader on how to study religion in a methodologically sophisticated way. This innovative volume is essential reading for those who want a contemporary and engaging approach to the study of world religions.

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things, Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion.

Since the beginning of modern Indology in the 19th century, the relationship between the early Indian religions of Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism has been predicated on a perceived dichotomy between two meta-historical identities: "the Brahmans" (purveyors of the ancient Vedic texts and associated ritual system) and the newer "non-Brahmanical" sramana movements from which the Buddhists and Jains emerged. Textbook and scholarly accounts postulate an opposition between these two groups, citing the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali, who is often quoted erroneously as likening them to the proverbial enemies snake and mongoose. Scholars continue to privilege Brahmanical Hindu accounts of early Indian history, and further portray Buddhist and Jain deviations from those accounts as evidence of their opposition to a pre-existing Brahmanism. In The Snake and The Mongoose, Nathan McGovern turns this commonly-accepted model of the origins of the early Indian religions on its head. His book seeks to de-center the Hindu Brahman from our understanding of Indian religion by "taming the snake and the mongoose"--that is, by abandoning the anachronistic distinction between "Brahmanical" and "non-Brahmanical." Instead, McGovern allows the earliest articulations of identity in Indian religion to speak for themselves through a comparative reading of texts preserved by the three major groups that emerged from the social, political, cultural, and religious foment of the late first millennium BCE: the Buddhists and Jains as they represented themselves in their earliest sutras, and the Vedic Brahmans as they represented themselves in their Dharma Sutras. The picture that emerges is not of a fundamental dichotomy between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical, but rather of many different groups who all saw themselves as Brahmanical. Thus, McGovern argues, it was through the contestation between these groups that the distinction between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical--the snake and the mongoose--emerged.