Title: All religion is inter-religion : engaging the work of Steven M. Wasserstrom /
Authors: GhaneaBassiri, Kambiz; Robertson, Paul; Wasserstrom, Steven M.
Year: 2019
Subjects: Religions Relations; Interfaith relations; Religions
Abstract: "All Religion Is Inter-Religion analyses the ways inter-religious relations have contributed both historically and philosophically to the constructions of the category of "religion" as a distinct subject of study. Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995), provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation. Drawing on these theses, as well as Wasserstrom's opus more generally, a distinguished group of colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can and must be understood through encounters in real time and space and through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, as well as between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the 21st century"--
Contents: Introducing Wasserstrom's work on religion / Kambiz GhaneaBassiri -- Nine theses on the study of religion / Steven M. Wasserstrom -- Anxiety, lament, and the language of silence: poetic redemption and gnostic / Elliot R. Wolfson -- The study of religion in a postmetaphysical age: philosophical and political reflections / Peter E. Gordon -- Taxonomy is epistemology: theorizing religion and hermeticism polythetically with Wasserstrom's theses / Paul Robertson -- Metrosophy: rereading Walter Benjamin in light of religion after religion / Jeremy F. Walton -- "La perversión de la cábala judía": Gershom Scholem and anti-Kabbalistic polemic in the Argentine Catholic nationalism of Julio Meinvielle / Jeremy P. Brown -- Before religion? The Zoroastrian concept of daena and two myths about it / Bruce Lincoln -- Nag hammadi at Eranos: rediscovering gnosticism among the historians of religions / J. Gregory Given -- Where the center of the rupture is called Judaism: Maurice Blanchot and religion after religion / Kirsten Collins -- Abrahamic encounters in the Weimar Wüste / Ruchama Johnston-Bloom -- Far too close: religion and reality in the work of Erich Auerbach and Muhammad Asad / Sam Kigar -- Is Sethian gnosticism an Abrahamic religion? Abraham, Sodom, and the parabiblical in ancient gnostic literature / Dylan M. Burns -- The repentant magician: "esoteric intimacies" and the enchantment of religious difference / Noah Salomon -- On the possibility of Jewish politics in our time: Scholem, exile, and early modern transformations / Anne Oravetz Albert -- Medieval Spanish Jews and the dangers of wealth / Andrew Berns -- Luksus and the Hasidic critique of postwar American capitalism / Michael Casper -- Epilogue: nine riddles / Steven M. Wasserstrom.