A collection of essays by distinguished scholars in the academic study of religion, The Craft of Religious Studies represents the variety of research and analytical methods that researchers employ when examining religious phenomena, whether personally or socially expressed. Autobiographical in cast, this collection points to diversity of approaches in the academic study of religion and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the field. While the ways scholars approach the study of religion in human culture vary, the common ground among them - as seen in these fourteen contributions - remains their quest for understanding more so than the paths toward understanding they have chosen.

Preface - Notes on Contributors - Introduction; J.R.Stone - Methods in My Life; N.Smar t - From Great Neck to Swift Hall: Confessions of a Reluctant Historian of Religions; W.Doniger - There is No Religion There; F.Staal - Climbing the Foothills of Understanding; J.Hick - From History to Religion; J.Neusner - Theological Autobiography; J.M.Robinson - Half a Life in Religious Studies: Confessions of an 'Historical Historian'; M.E.Marty - On Theory-Driven Methods; R.Stark - On Studying Religion; A.M.Greeley - Of Churches, Courts, and Moral Order; P.E.Hammond - Religion as Life and Text: Postmodern Re-figurations; E.Wyschogrod - Retracings; M.C.Taylor - Who Are You Really, And What Were You Before? Reflections on a Thinking Life; G.Gunn - The Rest is History; I.Strenski - Index

Jon R. Stone currently teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism (SMP).