Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Part one – Rethinking and Redirecting Classical Resources Chapter 1. Before ‘The Sacred’ Became Theological: Rereading the Durkheimian Legacy Chapter 2. Durkheim’s Reconciliation of the Social and the Religious Chapter 3. Sacred Order Chapter 4. World Chapter 5. The Concept of World Habitation: Eliadean Linkages with a New Comparativism Part two – Some New Levels for Cross-Cultural Patterns Chapter 6. Elements of a New Comparativism Chapter 7. Universals Revisited: Human Behaviors and Cultural Variations Chapter 8. Theaters of Worldmaking Behaviors: Panhuman Contexts for Comparative Religion Chapter 9. Comparison in the Study of Religion Part 3 – Responses to Evolutionary Sciences Chapter 10. Connecting with Evolutionary Models: New Patterns in Comparative Religion Chapter 11. Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Chapter 12. The Prestige of the Gods: Evolutionary Continuities in the Formation of Sacred Objects Chapter 13. The History of Religions and Evolutionary Models: Some Reflections on Framing a Mediating Vocabulary Epilogue Notes

Promotional Information

The first collected works of eminent scholar William E. Paden, reflecting his steps toward discovering patterns of religious behavior that correlate with evolutionary perspectives.

About the Author

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).

Reviews

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.
*Entangled Religions*

A methodological goldmine, New Patterns for Comparative Religion offers a new paradigm for the comparative study of religions in which ‘the enterprise of comparison…is perhaps our greatest claim to originality as an independent academic discipline’ (139). This thought-provoking work is recommended for university and community college libraries with substantial holdings in the study of religion. Graduate students and professors of religion will find this title of interest as well.
*Reading Religion*

Paden provides a valuable and nondogmatic glimpse into the current state of the scholarly domain of comparative religion and succeeds in addressing some of the field’s important hermeneutical tensions while offering inventive heuristic tools in an erudite and laudable manner.
*International Journal for the Study of New Religions*

The essays selected for this volume invite the readers to join a series of engaging conversations with key theoretical questions in the study of religion\s. These forays into various theoretical environments avoid hegemonic discourse, opening up interrelated perspectives on important aspects of the eco-sphere of religion.
*Michael Stausberg, Professor of Religion, University of Bergen, Norway*

This remarkable set of essays recounts Paden’s efforts to renew the comparative study of religion by placing his earlier emphasis on world making on an evolutionary footing. In focusing on behavior as a bridge between disciplines and recasting “worlds” as environmental “niches,” he points the way to a more robust comparativism.
*Ann Taves, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA*