Fabricating Difference - Steven W Ramey
11. Rightly Disdained by Intelligent Persons: Magic, Superstition, and the Disenchantment of the World
Fabricating Difference - Steven W Ramey
Ian Alexander Cuthbertson [+]
Dawson College
Ian Alexander Cuthbertson is a professor in the Humanities Department at Dawson College in Montréal, Québec. Ian is broadly interested in exploring how the category “religion” is deployed to legitimize certain beliefs, practices, and institutions while delegitimizing others.
Description
This essay builds on the discussion of difference and the assumptions about religion in Hughes by focusing on the distinction between religion and magic / superstition. Briefly tracing the distinction between religio and superstitio back 2000 years, Cuthbertson focuses on the emphasis on distinguishing between religion and magic arising from the Protestant Reformation. He highlights ways people have employed that distinction to dismiss Catholic ritual (by Protestant leaders), primitive religion (by forefathers of religious studies), and the contemporary Prosperity Gospel (by some scholars).