Scholarly Disciplines (Disciplines)

With the rise of digital technologies within religious spaces, there has been increased academic study of such religious practices.

In general, the comparative study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of religion such as ethics, metaphysics and the nature and forms of salvation.

In this respect, the phenomenology of religion takes the generalizing role that linguistics has over philologies or that anthropology has in relation the specific ethnographies: where the history of religions produces insights into specific religious traditions, the phenomenology of religion becomes the general scholarly (or scientific) enterprise that explains and interprets religious phenomena in general.

Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology.

Anthropology of religion is the study of religion in relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures.

Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, teleportation, precognition, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc.

Ethnobotany integrates knowledge from botany, anthropology, ecology, and chemistry to study plant-related customs across cultures.

Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes.