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Clifford Geertz: An Interfacing of Anthropology and Religious Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

John H. Morgan
John H. Morgan*
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary
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Abstract

Clifford Geertz is acclaimed today to be one of the most important theorists in the anthropology of religion. He has approached the subject-matter of religion from the perspective of a humanist seeking to come to an analytical understanding of the nature of culture as an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in a complex of symbol-systems. This approach, i.e., defining anthropology as a science of meaning-analysis, nurtures the study of culture as a meaning-system. Religion, too, says Geertz, is a cultural system and necessarily conveys meaning. Therefore, both culture and religion are meaning-systems and, we can conclude, both anthropology and theology attempt to analyze systematically these meaning-systems. The interfacing of the disciplines of anthropology (systematics of culture) and theology (systematics of religion) is made possible by the utilization of the category of “meaning” as a hermeneutical key to the understanding of both religion and culture as meaning-systems.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 1978 , pp. 203 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1978

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References

1 Geertz, Clifford, “Ethos, World-View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols,” Antioch Review (Winter, 1957–1958), p. 436.Google Scholar Other major works of Geertz include The Religion of Java (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1960);Google ScholarIslam Observed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968);Google ScholarThe Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973);Google ScholarMyth, Symbol, and Culture (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), ed. Geertz, Clifford;Google Scholar“Ideology as a Cultural System,” in Apter, D. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: The Free Press, 1964);Google Scholar“The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man,” in Platt, J. (ed.), New Views of the Nature of Man (Chicago: University Press, 1966);Google Scholar“The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind,” in Scher, J. (ed.), Theories of the Mind (New York: The Free Press, 1967);Google Scholar“Religion as a Cultural System,” in Banton, M. (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock, 1966);Google Scholar and “The Politics of Meaning,” in Holt, C. (ed.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

2 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 5.Google Scholar

3 Yinger, J. Milton, The Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 7.Google Scholar

4 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 14.Google Scholar

5 See my “Religion and Culture as Meaning Systems: A Dialogue Between Geertz and Tillich,” The Journal of Religion 67 (October, 1977), pp. 363–375.Google Scholar

6 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 24.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 25.

8 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 24.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 25.

8 Geertz, , “Ethos, World-View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols,” p. 422.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 For a consideration of Ernst Cassirer's reference to man as an animal symbolicum, see my article, “Theology and Symbol: An Anthropological Approach,” Journal of Religious Thought 30 (Fall, 1974), pp. 51–61;Google Scholar and also my article, “Religious Myth and Symbol: A Convergence of Philosophy and Anthropology,” Philosophy Today 18 (Spring, 1974), pp. 68–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 42.Google Scholar

12 Geertz, , The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 5.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 9.

14 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 3.Google Scholar

15 A splendid assessment of the current state of philosophical hermeneutics is presented by Palmer, Richard E., Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, especially his chapter on Heidegger.

16 Geertz, , The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 14.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 30.

18 Geertz, , “Religion as a Cultural System,” p. 23.Google Scholar

19 Berger, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor, 1969), p. 22.Google Scholar

20 Berger, Peter L., A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Sacred (New York: Anchor, 1970), p. 53.Google Scholar

21 Radin, Paul, Primitive Man as Philosophy (New York: Dover, 1957), p. xxi.Google Scholar

22 Geertz, , The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 5, 15.Google Scholar