Religion Without Explanation was published in 1976. It had grown out of lectures given at Swansea over the previous six years, lectures which were meant to discuss issues concerning religion which would be of interest to students in the social sciences as well as to students in the humanities. The structure of the book corresponds to that aim, with four of its chapters discussing Tylor and Frazer, Marett, Freud and Durkheim, with the remaining seven chapters, including the introduction and a discussion of Hume's legacy, being devoted to more traditional topics in the philosophy of religion.

For some time I had toyed with the idea of revising the book with a view to a second edition, but when I finally gave myself to the task in the summer and autumn of 1998 I found that revision soon became rewriting, since I now decided to address larger issues. I was also dissatisfied with various aspects of my original work. As a result, six chapters of the original work disappeared in writing this book, although use is made, now and again, of some material in them. More importantly, eight new chapters appear in the present work and important revisions are made in my previous discussions of the thinkers already mentioned.

In my first chapter on ‘Hermeneutics and the philosophical future of religious studies’ I attempt to distinguish philosophy's contemplative task from the critiques of religion found in the hermeneutics of suspicion, and from the apologetic concerns of the hermeneutics of recollection.