New Patterns for Comparative Religion

William E. Paden is Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Vermont, USA. He was Religion Department Chair for 22 years, and is author of Religious Worlds: The Comparative Study of Religion (1988, 1994) and Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion (1992, 2003).

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart one – Rethinking and Redirecting Classical ResourcesChapter 1. Before ‘The Sacred’ Became Theological: Rereading the Durkheimian LegacyChapter 2. Durkheim’s Reconciliation of the Social and the ReligiousChapter 3. Sacred OrderChapter 4. WorldChapter 5. The Concept of World Habitation: Eliadean Linkages with a New ComparativismPart two – Some New Levels for Cross-Cultural PatternsChapter 6. Elements of a New ComparativismChapter 7. Universals Revisited: Human Behaviors and Cultural VariationsChapter 8. Theaters of Worldmaking Behaviors: Panhuman Contexts for Comparative ReligionChapter 9. Comparison in the Study of ReligionPart 3 – Responses to Evolutionary SciencesChapter 10. Connecting with Evolutionary Models: New Patterns in Comparative ReligionChapter 11. Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of ReligionChapter 12. The Prestige of the Gods: Evolutionary Continuities in the Formation of Sacred ObjectsChapter 13. The History of Religions and Evolutionary Models: Some Reflections on Framing a Mediating VocabularyEpilogueNotes

This collection of essays, even if not representing a single, standardized theory of religion, offers a remarkably coherent whole which includes suggestive propositions for moving the comparative study of religion forward and to integrate divergent approaches.