3rd Edition

Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove An Invitation to Religious Studies

By J. Bowyer Bell Copyright 2009
236 Pages
by Routledge

236 Pages
by Routledge

235 Pages
by Routledge

The essence of Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove remains intact: its vision of religious studies as sustained refl ection on our lifelong voyage to discover who we are. The story we choose for ourselves, the story we live, can sacralize or secularize our lives and our world by the way in which we choose to relate to it. With this awareness of the story dimension of life, Ascent of the... Read more

Introduction to the Transaction Edition
Preface to the Revised Edition (1978)
Introduction: An Invitation to Religious Studies
ONE—The Voyage
1. The Religious Drive
2. What Religion is Not
3. Way of Life
4. Earthy Ecstasy
5. Conversion to the Sacred
TWO—Autobiography and Story
1. Religion as Autobiography
2. Cultural Stories and Personal Stories
3. Standpoint to Standpoint
4. "Story," Elaborated
5. What Cannot Be Said
6. The Aesthetic, The Moral, The Religious
7. Among the Many Rises and Declines of Reason
THREE—Cultures
1. Paradoxes of the Finite
2. Sense of Reality
3. From Culture to Cult
FOUR—Societies and Institutions
1. Institutions are Man's Natural Habitat
2. Freedom and Coercion
3. Are Institutions Obsolete?
4. The New Heteronomy
5. Secular Religion
6. The Communal Imagination
7. The Realities of Economics
8. Political Revolution
9. Civil Religion
FIVE—Organizations
1. Organized Anything
2. Liturgy
3. Church, Denomination, Sect
4. Holy Texts
5. Theologies
6. A Map of Christian Theologies in the United States
7. Theology as Suitor
SIX—Nature and History
SEVEN—How Then Shall We Act?
1. Elaborations on "Story"
2. A Story of My Own
Epilogue: New Horizons
Notes
Index of Names

Biography

J. Bowyer Bell