Mind and mood in the study of religion

This paper is a reflection on the attempt of authors like E. Valentine Daniel, S.Balagangadhara, Daniel Dubuisson, Timothy Fitzgerald and Tomoko Masuzawa to argue that the word “religion” is most appropriately used to describe Christianity but that it tends to distort description and analysis of non-western traditions. My concern is to correct their tendency to divide the world between east and west by using Daniel's (and C.S. Peirce's) notions of Mind and Mood to analyze a variety of religious traditions, east and west, that fulfill different social and cultural functions, and thus relate to definitions of words like “religion” and “dharma” and “shukyo” in a variety of ways.