Defining Religion
 
1.  What is an essentialist approach to defining religion mean?  Who are the major players and why do they say what they do?  How do people criticize this approach?
 
2.  What is a functionalist approach to defining religion?  Who are the major players and why do they say what they do?  What are the problems scholars have with the ability of a functionalist approach to discuss religion itself?
 
3.  How is functionalism described as being "misleading or outright illusory" where it attempts to contrast essentialism?  How is Penner's cross-disciplinary approach supposed to modify the functionalist approach?
 
4.  What is a family resemblance approach to defining religion?  Who are the major players and why do they say what they do?  Define prototype vs. ideal and how it influences definitions or religions?  What are the criticisms to this approach?
 
5.  Given that defining religion is an almost impossible task, what are the benefits of viewing classification systems as "human products, tools, that we make, use, fine tune, and, sometimes, discard."  What are the benefits and drawbacks of allowing religion no part outside the academy? 
 
6.  Are you an essentialist, functionalist, polytheticist, or is the definition constantly in flux?  Explain yourself.
 
7.  Being that we are scholars, of, or of not religion, aside, how do we study and classify the monument of the ten commandments?