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This final chapter sums up the main arguments of the book. It's aims have been to trace the parallels in Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and examine the affinities in their thought about religious belief. The book has attempted to undermine some of the more tenacious myths surrounding Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's religious thought and to show that the two authors — especially when read in the light of each other — still present the greatest challenge to the received orthodoxies in the philosophy of religion as well as to the subject's (philosophy's) own conception of itself.

This chapter discusses the eighteenth-century Church of England. It examines the changes in how people thought about the place of religion in eighteenth-century Britain by first looking at the histories of the eighteenth-century Church of England. The chapter studies the changing views of the Enlightenment's relationship to religious thought and practice in Britain. It ends with a discussion of the newer fields of study that have emerged, most especially during the latter part of the twentieth century.

Religious thought involves the presumption that superhuman agents exist, while theology involves postulations about these agents. This dual feature of religion seems to apply across the board. However, one religious system, Theravada Buddhism of South and Southeast Asia appears to challenge this assumption. It is argued that Buddhists are not passive recipients but active participants in Buddhism. Thus, Buddhism is the same as other religions because its members share the same cognitive equipment as members of other religions.

This chapter presents a survey of Thoreau's religious ideas, which adheres to the general contours of his own treatment of religion in the chapter entitled “Sunday”, from his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Key to appreciating the views expressed here is a recognition of the degree to which they are embedded in a narrative about his previous experience and predicated on the rhetoric of what becomes, in effect, his own Sunday sermon. It is argued that Thoreau's practice of interpolating long digressions about religion into the body of a travel narrative has an important religious or theological rationale.

This chapter argues that the emergence of broad ecological degradation and new biogenetic engineering capabilities, while certainly posing new threats, challenges, and ranges of moral responsibility, do not confront us with a condition of being “without nature.” In fact, the emergence of the ecological sciences in the last century has helped open peoples' eyes across the globe to humanity's inextricable dependency upon the well-being of Earth's ecosystems and stable climate patterns. The chapter further argues that it is not that the expanding threats of ecological degradation and climate change confront us with a situation such that we stand “without nature” in some “new condition for theology.”. Rather, it suggests that for dominant streams of modern philosophy and Protestant theology, thinking “without nature” has been the norm. Viewing theological reflection “without nature” is in fact a deeply entrenched problem for dominant streams of Protestant and Catholic thinking across the history of the modern period.

Diagne concludes with the the Bergsonism that Senghor and Iqbal each shaped for the purposes of their respective thought. Senghor’s Bergson was the Bergson of vital understanding who emphasized that “the intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life.” As for Muhammad Iqbal’s Bergsonism, Diage goes back to the word “affinity” to describe Iqbal’s relationship to Bergson’s philosophy. Rather than “applying” Bergson’s concepts, Iqbal truly thought withhim.

This chapter addresses the central issue: what was the substance and significance of Weber's religious thought taken as a whole? In more formal language: what was the Weberian sociology of religion and how should we assess it? It discusses the centrality of the ascetic/mystic typology of religious behaviour to Weber's thought; Weber's elevation of Entzauberung, the removal of magic, to a prominent place in his religious typology; ethical and salvation religion; and the problem of meaning.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to provide a full reconstruction and analysis of Thoreau's religious thought and experience. The book aims to describe the major forms of thought and experience relevant to Thoreau's spiritual life, to show how they are mediated and represented in his writings, and to recognize their implications for an overall understanding of his life and work.

This chapter discusses the past, present, and future of southern religious history and suggests how much of Charles Reagan Wilson's academic lifetime of work has foreshadowed, shaped, and developed work in the field over the last generation. Scholars of Wilson's generation tried to understand the origins and dominance of evangelicalism. The present and future of historical writing in this field is about incorporating a diversity of southern religious stories, ranging from the Powhatan Confederacy in early Virginia, to Moravians in North Carolina, Spiritualists in New Orleans and elsewhere, and Catholics throughout the region. Another major theme of southern religious history is the centrality and constant interplay of the revolutionary and the revivalist traditions in southern history, and a parallel interplay between racialized particularity and Christian universalism in southern religious thought and practice.