ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on how they study religious worldviews, and what brought them to find the task of immersion important. It describes the as “structured communities which constitute the horizons of understanding give direction and purpose to activities and foster distinctive moral virtues and emotional dispositions.” The book examines how one remains neutral when confronted with religious and political assumptions that appear to the analyst to be deeply misguided, and how much of oneself the scholar needs to share to gain the trust of the research subject. The study of ideas and activities related to religion can be understood not just as epiphenomenal but also as part of the social and political milieus of which they are a part. The book explains the problem that researchers have when they possess a rigid understanding of what counts as being authentically religious.
