ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION--Syllabus for Summer 2009 (On-Line)
Course Prefix/Number: ANT 3241
Course Title: Anthropology of Religion
Course Credit Hours: 3
Instructor Name and Contact Information: Dr. Terry Prewitt; tprewitt@uwf.edu;
850.474.2186; building 13, room 129
Prerequisites or Co-Requisites: None
Course Description: The Anthropology of Religion course explores religion as a
universal manifestation of human culture. The lessons are divided into four sections: (1)
foundation concepts; (2) religion, culture and nature; (3) theology, gender and
monotheism; (4) immanence and separateness. The course is designed for a general
university-level audience, supporting the core curriculum of the anthropology program
and serving as a strong elective for social science and humanities students with interests
in religion. The units of study provided for each section of the course extend particular
cultural manifestations of religious behavior and ideology. As a whole, the four sections
of the course build toward a general understanding of religion and the philosophical
perspectives justifying different kinds of religious belief.
Goals: This systematic and broad treatment of religion will prepare the successful
student to accomplish the following course goals:
1. Define the behavioral elements or ideas pertinent to understanding any form of
religion.
2. Extend the prominent 20th century theories of religion.
3. Distinguish traditional, modern, and postmodern practices of religion.
4. Apply descriptive terms in the illustration of observed religious behaviors.
5. Discover the patterns of religious behavior common to particular kinds of social
systems.
6. Compare the prominent associations of deity with ethnicity and geography.
7. Analyze religious activities to infer the system of cultural premises that underlie
them.
About this Course: This course is delivered completely online. You must have
consistent access to the Internet.
Learning at a distance may be a very different environment for many of you. You will
generally set your own schedules, participate in class activities at your convenience, and
work at your own pace. You may spend some additional time online during the first few
weeks while you become acclimated to the online class format and you may feel
overwhelmed. You should also be prepared to spend approximately 5 - 7 hours per
week online completing lessons, activities, and participating in class discussions. Finally,
you may want to incorporate these tips to help you get started:
Set yourself a schedule -- check the course web site early in the class week to see what
tasks you'll need to work on for the week.
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Become very familiar with the site and how to use it. It is a tool to help you learn!
Team up with your classmates to discuss class assignments and questions you
might have. Check the “Classlist” link ? for biography info and email addresses.
Ask questions when you need answers. If you have problems, contact your
instructor ASAP! They will help you come up with a solution!
Topics & Student Learning Outcomes:
Topic 1: Theology, Religion, Philosophy, Practice
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Define the key terms anthropologists use to recognize religious activity.
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Recognize archaeological, historical, and ethnographic data pertinent to religious
studies.
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Distinguish religion (as practice) from theology (as a foundation of premises).
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Summarize in general terms the history of human religious systems.
Topic 2: Animism, Magic, Prayer, and Understanding of Nature
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Compare the diverse associations of breath/life/spirit that exist in ancient IndoEuropean and Semitic cultures, as well as in many other world cultures.
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Relate the religious functions of such diverse verbal activities as story telling,
dramatic recitation, chanting, prayer, uttering spells, and ecstatic utterance.

Identify the scholars who originated the 20th century anthropological theories of
religion.
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Recognize animistic elements in the religious texts of Western monotheism and the
practices of modern secular culture.
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Classify forms of religious behavior in terms of premises about magic and prayer.
Topic 3: Mythos and Ethos
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Define all of the elements of tragedy defined in Aristotle’s Poetics.
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Illustrate the relationship between drama and ritual with historical and ethnographic
examples.
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Relate the traditional practices known as shamanism to concepts of ritual and
drama.

Apply the ideas of mythos and ethos to the study of religious behavior or texts.

Compare ancient concepts of mythos to modern concepts of scientific epistemology.
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Apply linguistic and literary tools to the study of myths as open explanatory systems.
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Discover underlying similarities of structure in the myths of traditional cultures.
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Compare similar myth structures from different cultures.
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Classify myths into groups created for common purposes.
Topic 4: Myth and Totemism
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Define the semiotic terms anthropologists use to express totems and related
symbolic associations.
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Describe some of the common theories of totemism within traditional cultures.
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Recognize totemic elements in symbolic systems as diverse as kinship groupings
and modern military or sports organizations.
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Relate the elements of totemism to ritual, prayer, and other behavioral aspects of
religious behavior.
Topic 5: Ancestor Worship
 Express the relationships of life-cycle through the terms of kinship process and
terminology.
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Recognize the kinship elements in mythology.
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Interpret archaeological and historical data through kin-based myth readings (e.g.,
with examples line the Iliad or Torah stories).
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Extend the “tribal” associations of classical systems into such ethnographic
examples as Melanesian, ancient Japanese, or Pueblo Indian culture.
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Compare/Contrast ancient and ethnographic examples of ancestor worship to
modern Western death practices.
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Summarize place/myth associations for the Apache, Australians, and ancient
Hebrews.
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Illustrate with strategic examples how stories bind people to places generally.
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Compare “place-grounded” interpretations of Western scriptures to common
interpretations.
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Contrast traditional and Western religious practices in terms of place analysis.
Topic 6: Feminine Deity
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Describe how gender concepts influence concepts of deity.

Identify the evidence for prominent feminine deity in earlier human cultures.
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Illustrate how modern ideas of the masculine (and especially masculine God) make
it hard for us to empathize with “feminine deity.”

Compare modern goddess worship to the ancient systems of feminine religious
associations.
Topic 7: Chthonic Gods
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Distinguish pure animism (such as the kami of Shinto) from zoomorphic and
anthropomorphic forms of animism (such as the kachina beliefs of the Pueblo
Indians).
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Compare the gods constructs of the early state systems in Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Mexico, and Peru.

Relate the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods to the religious tradition that
developed into Judaism and Christianity.
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Interpret chthonic deities as extensions of elements such as animism, totemism, and
ancestor worship
Topic 8: The Male Divine
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Identify the impacts of masculine biases in Western culture on the history of
religious concepts.
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Contrast gender-sensitive and non-ethnocentric readings of Western scripture to
readings that assume modern gender categories.

Relate our modern concepts of God to our cultural system of gender classification.
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Deconstruct western God concepts in terms of demonstrable feminine elements in
scripture.
Topic 9: Sacred Texts

Describe the ancient and continuing relationship between “writing” and “magic” as
an extension of speech and creative power.

Identify the magical and ritual uses that writing has served, especially in Western
culture.

Summarize the history of writing in Old World and New World cultures.
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Summarize the problems and methods of documentary study of religious texts in
Western biblical studies and related disciplines.
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Assess the impacts writing has had on Western ideas of deity and comparative
religion.
Topic 10: Theism
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Recognize theistic principles regardless of the cultural forms through which they are
expressed.
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Describe trickster archetypes through traditional, biblical, and modern examples.
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Distinguish theism and deism in Western monotheism and its derivative cultures.
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Distinguish imminence and separateness as qualities of everyday experience.

Classify religious systems in terms of their premises about imminence and
separateness.
Topic 11: Congregations and Denominations
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Identify the conceptual differences between “fundamentalism” and “liberalism” in
modern (16th century through the present) religious practice.

Summarize the reconstruction central ideas binding the Chaco Culture from the 9th11th centuries in the American Southwest.
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Summarize religious positions on modern Israel in terms of place-grounded
mythology and concepts of imminence and/or separateness.
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Deconstruct the idea of religion in terms of group “intersubjectivity”.
Topic 12: Deism and Modernism
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Compare the pre-Socratic philosophers to modern (and post-modern) perspectives
on existence and the meaning of human society within existence.

Summarize the culture-historical processes through which Western society has
become progressively secular and “science-oriented” while not rejecting theistic
philosophy completely.

Categorize kinds of modern religious experience on the basis of premises about the
size of society, complexities of technology, and other elements of the contemporary
world.
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Construct/articulate a personal religious system and its bases of theological
premises.
Required texts:
Scott Leonard and Michael McClure, Myth and Knowing: An Introduction to World
Mythology (McGraw Hill, 2003). Available from Amazon.com for under $70
Recommended texts:
World English Bible Website: Available at: http://www.worldenglishbible.org/
Required Materials:
Internet Access
E-mail Account
Grading / Evaluation:
Each topic/session of the course will be accompanied by a graded assignment worth 9
points. An additional participation point (1 point) will be added for students who complete
all work in a timely and interactive manner. This includes “Discussions” participation
associated with each topic. Thus, the session grades for the course total 120 points (12
sessions x 10 points each). In addition, the final examination will be worth 27 points, and
an additional 3 participation points will be based upon your overall engagement in the
course.
Many of the sessions may have more than one graded assignment associated with it.
Sometimes these assignments will be the same for everyone, and sometimes randomly
generated from a set of possible activities. Not all assignments will be of the same type,
though most involve drawing associations or expressing concepts. Some of the
assignments may be timed essays. Enough time will be provided (typically 1 hour), but
you will need to complete your assessment of the question, organization of the answer,
and writing within the allotted time.
Although the formats for assignments may vary from unit to unit, you may expect to
encounter the following kinds of assessment activity during the course.
1. Unit quiz – using either matching or short identification formats, students define or
identify definitions of key concepts used in academic discourse on religion, or basic
substantive descriptions drawn from the texts, assigned readings, or other experiences
of the course (given at the completion of unit lessons—open start access, limited time
availability after start).
2. Unit problem – a structured problem designed to help students either apply terms for
description/distinction or discover patterns underlying a data set (given at appropriate
points within the unit lessons). These problems produce small-scale distinctions of
patterns through application of terms (assigned with set due dates and format
instructions).
3. Summarizing essay – students provide a short substantive summary of the material
from a unit or section. These exercises will elicit explicit recall of facts or theories that will
help develop perspective for larger-scale analysis (given at appropriate points within the
unit lessons).
4. Section essay – students select from a short list of options that ask about known
historical or extant forms of religion, theories of religion, and particular cultural examples
from the lessons. Section essays elicit responses that distinguish forms or extend and
inter-relate basic definitions (given at the completion of the section).
5. Section exercise – a “problem” or example that has not been directly experienced
through the class, but which offers strategic assessment of the students’ control of
definitions, terms, and pattern recognition processes. Section exercises look for
application of terms, discovery of patterns, and sometimes comparison of results (given
either at the completion of the section, or as part of the final examination)
6. Essay examination – a series of required essay responses to specific queries relating
to the content of the course as a whole. Essay examinations tend to seek comparison
and analysis (given at the end of the course).
Students who are not satisfied with a session graded assignment may submit optional
assignments to replace a grade (you must complete the original assignment to be
allowed to replace the grade). No student may receive more than 150 points for the
course (135 substantive points and 15 participation points).
Final grades are computed on the following basis:
93 - 100 - A
87 - 89 - B+
77 - 79 - C+
67 - 69 - D+
90 - 92 - A-
83 - 86 - B
73 - 76 - C
60 - 66 - D
80 - 82 - B-
70 - 72 - C-
below 60 - F
References/Bibliography:
Special Technology Utilized by Students: This course is totally online. All instructional
content and interaction takes place over the WWW. In addition to baseline word
processing skills and sending/receiving email with attachments, students will be
expected to search the internet and upload / download files. In addition, students may
need one or more of the following plug-ins if they are not already installed on your
computer:
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Adobe Acrobat Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
PowerPoint Viewer: http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D1649C22B51F-4910-93FC-4CF2832D3342&displaylang=en
Windows Media Player: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/
Quicktime Player: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
Real Player:
http://forms.real.com/netzip/getrde601.html?h=207.188.7.150&f=windows/RealOnePlayer
V2GOLD.exe&p=RealOne+Player&oem=dl&tagtype=ie&type=dl
Macromedia Flash Player:
http://macromedia.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=Shockwa
veFlash
Expectations for Academic Conduct/Plagiarism Policy:
Academic Conduct Policy: (Web Format) | (PDF Format) | (RTF Format)
Plagiarism Policy: (Word Format) | (PDF Format) | (RTF Format)
Student Handbook: (PDF Format)
ASSISTANCE:
Students with special needs who require specific examination-related or other courserelated accommodations should contact Barbara Fitzpatrick, Director of Disabled
Student Services (DSS), dss@uwf.edu, (850) 474-2387. DSS will provide the student
with a letter for the instructor that will specify any recommended accommodation.
ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION—Orginal Syllabus for the Classroom
Course:
NOTE: This course syllabus below has been revised into a 12 unit class designed for
distance delivery, offered for the first time in the Spring of 2005. Learning outcomes for
the course are as follows:
1. Define the behavioral elements or ideas pertinent to understanding any form of
religion.
2. Extend the prominent 20th century theories of religion.
3. Distinguish traditional, modern, and postmodern practices of religion.
4. Apply descriptive terms in the illustration of observed religious behaviors.
5. Discover the patterns of religious behavior common to particular kinds of social
systems.
6. Compare the prominent associations of deity with ethnicity and geography.
7. Analyze religious activities to infer the system of cultural premises that underlie
them.
The distance format replaces some of the assignments
below with shorter and more directed writing
opportunities geared to specific units, coupled with
assignment of additional essays and book chapters that
either ground or exemplify the focus of each unit. The
course also employs threaded discussions on target
essays as a basis of engaging students directly, and
working to develop student collaboration in the learning
process. The distance class also extends the use of
ecological material in the characterization of religious
forms, their evolution, and their unity as a universal
manifestation of human culture. As the distance class is
put in final form, the syllabus will be linked here. I am
leaving the original 2003 syllabus here because is
presents an abstracted description of the content and
orientation of the course.
ASSIGNMENTS:
Response Essays: Each student must respond to four take-home essays from the
questions provided at the conclusion of many of the class periods. Response essays will
be approximately 500 words each. Essays will be individually graded and the grades
averaged to determine 40% of the course grade. You may write as many essays as are
assigned, but the value of the combined grades may never exceed 40%.
Attendance and Participation: Everyone begins with an “A” for attendance and
participation. This grade, which represents 10% of the course grade, will be influenced
by excessive or unexcused absences. Grades in the course will automatically be lowered
one step in the grading system (A A-, A-  B+, etc.) for each third class missed
without an excuse. Persistent absences will result in grade reductions regardless of
“excused” or “unexcused” status. All readings should be completed before the class
date on which they are listed.
Examinations: There will be a final examination consisting of five essay questions.
Each question will provide a choice between two prompts relating to one of the lines of
inquiry in the course. The answers will relate to one of the prompts individually, or will
integrate the interests of both prompts. There will be a practice exercise toward the end
of the course which illustrates the essay format. The final examination will represent
50% of the course grade.
Texts: Scott Leonard & Michael McClure Myth and Knowing: An Introduction to World
Mythology (McGraw Hill, 2003). This reader is comprehensive (if it is available in a
timely way for the course); in the event the book is not available, we will rely on library
resources and handouts or bibliography provided in class or on line. For biblical
resources, you may want to see World English Bible on-line:
There are many kinds of supplemental resources available for this course. I will
periodically suggest books and articles for individual reading. When possible, I will link
on-line materials that cover our reading needs.
LECTURE / DISCUSSION SCHEDULE
One
Religion : Theology :: Practice : Philosophy
The opening lecture deals with “religion” as an idea universal to human
culture. The questions we must face are, “Is there an activity we may call
religion in all human cultures?” and “Do we always easily recognize
religion when we encounter it?” The lecture grounds our essentially
evolutionary and anthropological treatment of religious phenomena in
culture.
Two
Animism
Sir James Frazer and other 19th century anthropologists defined “animism”
in terms of the dominant European concept of the soul. This was part of a
religious-cultural ideology of the time. Today we define animism is
slightly different terms that ground our broader understanding of human
“religion” and “spiritual” action in the world, relating the concepts also to
our psychological development through the life cycle.
Three
Mythos and Ethos
Aristotle defined “Mythos” as the “structure of events” and “Ethos” as a
phenomenon very similar to the modern concept of culture. This lecture
explores the ideas of “myth” and “culture” as they relate to ethnic
identification, religious behavior, and humanity. We can also apply
concepts of myth to aspects of modern scientific epistemology, opening a
discussion of the limitations of cultural definitions of “truth”. Read Myth
and Knowing chapters 1 and 2. The foundations of myth studies are
deep and varied within the Western tradition. As you read about the ideas
of Frazer, Campbell, Lvi-Strauss, Eliade, and others, reflect upon how
the ideas weigh against your direct experiences with the great texts of our
tradition. Also, as we move through the book, remember that world
creation myths are at the core of our experience of myth. Though they
vary in many particulars and in structure (and, as we see from the
readings, even medium), we should remember that they present to us an
essential purpose of most mythology and folklore—stories of origin and
transformation (or origin through completion).
Four
Totemism
Totems are fundamental signs of “kinship” running between human
societies and the surrounding world. By understanding totemism, we
come to understand how the human mind constructs society and the
surrounding world from a chaos of possibilities. Though our current
religious concepts may be very far removed from totemism, they are no
less engaged in fictional relationships believed on the basis of
conventional “signs”.
Five
Ancestor Worship
Ancestor worship is a natural outgrowth of the life-cycle, kinship
processes running through time, and the known/attested connections of
“historical” generations. We can view how ancestor worship operates in
segmented and alliance-based kinship systems by viewing the biblical
genealogies of Torah and other books of the Hebrew bible. Read Myth
and Knowing chapter 3, “The Female Divine.” As we begin to consider
ancestor worship, we must also take into account how kinship
considerations enter into mythology. We have already encountered basic
kinship ideas in myths, for the “structures” of kinship are often coextensive and parallel to the structures of action we call “mythos” (or
plot). Because we live in a society with masculine biases of worldview, it
is appropriate that we recognize at once that maternity is much more
certain than paternity, and that this may have had diverse impacts on the
prehistoric conception of the divine. But even as we encounter the
Goddess, we will also of necessity encounter the God, since the gender
principles demand complementary treatment. In this realization, we enter
into the discussion of “Goddess” and “God” stages in the evolution of
concepts of supernatural connection with a very different set of concerns
than those that organized the chapters in the text. Still, we will discover
immediately that the women in all myths, especially our own phallocentric
myths, are quite central to the establishment of mythic meaning.
Six
Words and Magic
“Anima” and “Ruach” are Greek and Hebrew words for air/breath/wind.
In most of the ancient Western cultures, as in many other cultures around
the world, the words for air or breath were intimately connected with the
efficacy of life. Words, as manifestations of breath, also became
important elements of creative power in magical traditions of humanity.
Following ideas presented by David Abrams, Kieth Basso, Joseph
Campbell, and others, we will explore the connections between words and
magic in religious systems, including Christianity and Judaism.
Seven
Chthonic Gods
The ideas of the totem and the ancestral god have often been elaborated
into extraordinary characters presented in myth and folklore—including
creator gods of diverse form. The basic idea here is that we can conceive
of beings whose existence is both mind-independent and prior to our own.
In a world of magic, such beings can be visualized as powerful and
primary—existing before existence as we know it. Such chthonic gods are
especially prominent in the mythos of origins created by the earliest
human civilizations. Read Myth and Knowing chapter 4, “The Male
Divine.” Though we will continue to stress the complementary
relationship between gendered god concepts, we must also recognize that
Western culture has give successively stronger emphasis to the “male
divine” since the spread of Indo-Europeans and Semitic people across the
Near East, Europe, and North Africa over the past 4-5000 years. What is
clear from documentary and archaeological evidence is that there was a
more equalitarian relationship of the gendered “gods” in early myths, and
that the “goddess” in various forms emerged alongside the “god” in most
traditions (though not necessarily in equal manifestation). That is, our
traditions mirror the societies of our heritage, meaning that they are very
male centered. Our reading should lead to a deeper discussion of
theology/theology and alternative interpretations to the strong “God” and
“Goddess” traditions that have been staked out in our time.
Eight
Sacred Texts
Though formal writing is found mainly among civilizations, beginning
some 4500 years ago, the precursors of writing extend back to perhaps
10,000 years ago across the Old World. Although some early writing
served very pragmatic functions, the connection of magic and words
quickly gave rise to written charms and other texts. This lecture will trace
how writing and recitation are connected in the Hebrew tradition, as well
as how writing gave rise to politico-religious power in early civilizations.
Nine
Theism
Western Civilization gave rise to many ideas of gods, and ultimately to
various forms of religion linked to single or primary gods (forms of
monotheism). We will consider theism as a key produce of Western
theology, that branch of philosophy pertaining to the “supernatural.” But
theism is not limited to our system of primary Islamic, Christian, or Judaic
god concepts. In fact, we need to explore the kinds of syncretism that
resulted in our evolved concepts of “the” Western God. Read Myth and
Knowing chapter 5, “Trickster Myths.” In trickster myths we encounter
worlds full of natural and supernatural causes, not always easily
classifiable. This is because, consistent with the idea of myths as stories
of origins, trickster myths often provide explanations or justifications for
natural or cultural patterns. If we consider “gods” as instruments behind
things we do not control (again, either natural or supernatural), then
trickster myths take us into a more generalized notion of theism than the
limited sense of “God” we encounter in most of our tradition.
Ten
Congregations and Denominations
Attached to ideas about God or gods are groups of people, typically, who
share concepts and practices. Such congregations may be part of larger
authoritarian groups. This lecture considers the important links between
individual belief and knowledge, ideas that bind groups, and the kinds of
social power and authority that characterize belief, tolerance, and
intolerance.
Eleven
Deism
In ancient Greek and Roman society, there were many individuals who
either did not believe in the gods (atheism), or believed that such gods had
no real interest in our world. These same ideas have marked
denominations, congregations, and individuals throughout modern
history. This final lecture considers how secular society and rational
knowledge tends to undermine many of the elements of traditional
religious systems. At the same time, we will also reflect on the apparent
vitality of and need for theology and religion in human society. Read
Myth and Knowing chapter 6, “Sacred Places.” As human institutions
became fixed in place and larger in social scope, the importance of the
original connection of landscape and myth became concentrated into
specialized localities and structures. This has usually become a process of
distancing “gods” or “god” from ordinary life, and assigning to specific
individuals the task of accomplishing connections for the group between
the supernatural and natural worlds. This differentiation between
immanent and indirect or removed gods (and their powers) separates
religion in traditional cultures from that of the great religious traditions.
Yet we still mythologize these place associations.