Bruce Lincoln’s “How to Read a Religious Text”
An Experiment of Application
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i2.13Keywords:
Bruce Lincoln, Sara J. Duncan, African Methodist Episcopal Church, women and religionAbstract
In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions, Lincoln’s “How to Read a Religious Text” is anchored in decades of work with mythological texts or canonical texts, the six points deployed have their origins in his prior work, Theorizing Myth (Lincoln 2012, 5-15; Lincoln 1999, 150-155). 1 The sections from the Chandogya Upani?ds that Lincoln uses to illustrate his points thus, fall in line with a number of his selected examples over the course of his career, add to this the analysis of relatively discrete events. The essay will apply Lincoln’s six lines of inquiry to Sara J. Duncan’s Progressive Missions in the South and Addresses: With Illustrations and Sketches of Missionary Workers and Ministers and Bishop’s Wives (1906) to walk through of the utility, limits and necessary adaptations that surface when Lincoln’s categories are applied to other types of religious texts beyond myth and canon.
References
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———. 1996. “The Controversy Over Women’s Ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church During the 1880’s: The Case of Sarah Ann Hughes.” This Far by Faith, Readings in African-American Women’s Religious Biography. 94–109 New York: Routledge.
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Coppin, Levi. 1916. Episcopal Address Delivered by Bishop Levi J. Coppin to the 25th General Conference of the A.M.E. Church May 1916, Bethel Church A.M.E. Church; Philadelphia.
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Duncan, Sara H. 1906. Progressive Missions in the South and Addresses: With Illustrations and Sketches of Missionary Workers and Ministers and Bishop’s Wives, Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing. http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/duncan/duncan.html
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Franklin, V. P., and Bettye Collier-Thomas 2002. “Biography, Race and Vindication, and African American Intellectuals.” The Journal of African-American History, 87: 160–74.
Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend. 2006. “Exploring the Religious Connection: Black Women Community Workers, Religious Agency and the Force of Faith.” In Women and Religion in the African Diaspora Knowledge, Power, and Performance. R. Marie Griffith and Barbara Dianne Savage editors, 179-196, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Griffiths, R. Marie, and Barbara Dianne Savage. 2006. Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power and Performance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hale, Sara Josepha. 1855. Woman’s Record or Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from The Creation to A.D. 1854 Arranged in Four Eras with Selections From Female Writers of Every Age. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
Hjelm, Titus, 2011. “Discourse Analysis” in Stausberg Michael, and Steven Engler. 2011. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Religion. New York: Routledge.
Jones, Jacqueline. (1986) 2010. Revised edition. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow Black Women and Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books.
Lincoln, Bruce. 1989. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth Ritual and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1999. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology and Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2012. Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Weisenfeld, Judith and Richard Newman. 1996. Editors This Far by Faith, Readings in African-American Women’s Religious Biography. New York: Routledge.
———. 1996. “The Controversy Over Women’s Ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church During the 1880’s: The Case of Sarah Ann Hughes.” This Far by Faith, Readings in African-American Women’s Religious Biography. 94–109 New York: Routledge.
Bender, Courtney. 2010. The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the New Religious Imagination, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. 2003. “Meta Warrick's 1907 "Negro Tableaux" and (Re)Presenting African American Historical Memory” The Journal of American History 89 1368–1400 "http://www.jstor.org/stable/3092547" http://www.jstor.org/stable/3092547 .
Butler, Anthea. 2007. Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press.
Collier-Thomas, Bettye, 2010. Jesus, Jobs and Justice: African-American Women and Religion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Coppin, Levi. 1916. Episcopal Address Delivered by Bishop Levi J. Coppin to the 25th General Conference of the A.M.E. Church May 1916, Bethel Church A.M.E. Church; Philadelphia.
Dandridge, Octavia W. 1987. A History of the Women's Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1874¬1987.[United States]: The Society.
Dickerson, Dennis C.. 2003. A Liberated Past “Gender and the Gospel: Bishop Henry M. Turner and the Rise of Female Clergy in Georgia, 1896-1908.”
Dodson, Julyanne. 2002. Engendering Church: Women, Power and the A.M.E. Church, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Duncan, Sara H. 1906. Progressive Missions in the South and Addresses: With Illustrations and Sketches of Missionary Workers and Ministers and Bishop’s Wives, Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing. http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/duncan/duncan.html
Evans, Curtis, J. 2008. The Burden of Black Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Franklin, V. P., and Bettye Collier-Thomas 2002. “Biography, Race and Vindication, and African American Intellectuals.” The Journal of African-American History, 87: 160–74.
Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend. 2006. “Exploring the Religious Connection: Black Women Community Workers, Religious Agency and the Force of Faith.” In Women and Religion in the African Diaspora Knowledge, Power, and Performance. R. Marie Griffith and Barbara Dianne Savage editors, 179-196, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Griffiths, R. Marie, and Barbara Dianne Savage. 2006. Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power and Performance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hale, Sara Josepha. 1855. Woman’s Record or Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from The Creation to A.D. 1854 Arranged in Four Eras with Selections From Female Writers of Every Age. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
Hjelm, Titus, 2011. “Discourse Analysis” in Stausberg Michael, and Steven Engler. 2011. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Religion. New York: Routledge.
Jones, Jacqueline. (1986) 2010. Revised edition. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow Black Women and Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books.
Lincoln, Bruce. 1989. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth Ritual and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1999. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology and Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2012. Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Maffly-Kipp, Laurie. 2010. Setting Down the Sacred Past: American Race Histories. Cambridge, Harvard University Press
Polk, Alma A. 1947. Twelve Pioneer Women in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. n.p.
Stausberg Michael, and Steven Engler. 2011. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Religion. New York: Routledge.
Still, Mary. 1857. An Appeal to the Females of the African Methodist Episcopal Church by Mary Still and Published at the Request of the Publication Society of the A.M.E. Church of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Peter McKenna and Son.
Turner, Henry M. 1893. African Letters (Nashville: Publishing House A.M.E. Sunday School Union) Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/turneral/turner.html"
Weisenfeld, Judith and Richard Newman. 1996. Editors This Far by Faith, Readings in African-American Women’s Religious Biography. New York: Routledge.
Published
2013-04-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Chatterjea, I. (2013). Bruce Lincoln’s “How to Read a Religious Text”: An Experiment of Application. Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 42(2), 13-19. https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i2.13
