Conceptual analysis demonstrates how deep-time comparative frameworks explain religious consolidation, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary integration.
Key Points
To outline a theoretical and methodological framework for analyzing global religious history across extensive geographic and temporal scales.
Reviewed historiographical and epistemological challenges in the definition of religion and the field of Globale Religionsgeschichte.
Synthesized comparative macro-historical frameworks with insights from anthropology, historical sociology, and cognitive science.
Identified two central organizing problems: the consolidation of diverse localized religious systems into major world religions and the shift of religion away from the center of political life.
Applied an immanentism-transcendentalism model to explain the historical development of macro-cultural regions and civilizations.
Argued that evaluating long-term secularization and modernity requires cross-disciplinary models bridging deep history and cognitive science.