The Academic Study Of Religion During The Cold War

Download or read book The Academic Study of Religion During the Cold War written by Iva Dolezalova and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the academic study of religion in the former Soviet Union had to contend with an official ideology of scientific atheism, such study in the West - particularly in the United States - was being (re)invented in the 1960s, during the very midst of the Cold War. The twenty-one contributions to this volume - by scholars from North America, Europe, Russia, and eastern Europe - examine the ideological and theological influences on the academic study of religion during the period from 1945 to 1989 and thus raise the question of whether an academic study of religion (Religionswissenschaft) might be defined in ways that avoid the extremes of both ideology and theology.