The Secular Faith Controversy Religion in Three Dimensions

includes index and biblioraphy

Part I: The religious situation in three dimensions
1 Problems 7
Prelude: common misconceptions and three groups 7
1. For practitioners of religion: explicating the implicit 14
2. For leaders of religion: valuing the occasional 18
3. For students of religion: gauging the transcendent 22
Postlude: the disciples` dilemma 27
2 Reactions 31
Prelude: `modernizing` Methodism 31
1. Denying identity: conformity, insincerity and apathy 33
2. Maximizing difference: ritual, dogma and culture 36
3. Ignoring evidence: categories, experience and humanness 40
Postlude: changing meaning 45
3 Alternatives 47
Prelude: consensus among the faithful 47
1. In general: acknowledging, cooperating, communing 48
2. For specialists: distinguishing, communicating,incorporating 51
3. Among analysts: recognizing, reconceptualizing,remodelling 54
Postlude: Durkheim`s `sacred` 57
Part II: Religion in three dimensions
4 A three-dimensional model of religiosity 63
Prelude: the need for three dimensions 63
1 Social experience: ecology, society, culture 64
2 Human consciousness: intensification - bifurcation,individuation - interrelationship, conscientization -contextualization 68
3 Religious experience: sensing, encountering,committing 70
Postlude: being personal three ways 73
5 The three dimensions of religious experience 77
Prelude: religious studies as religious 77
1 Its content: the sacred, the holy and the human 78
2 Its extrapolation: integrity, identity and divinity 81
3 Its intrapolation: bird, worm and mole 83
Postlude: religion and implicit religion 85
6 Some applications 89
Prelude: a working model? 89
1 Religious: spiritual discernment, religious discrimination and final judgement
2 Spiritual: coinherence and intercession,adoration and confession,contemplation and worship 93
Human: growing, doing, dying 96
3 Postlude