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Is Religious Studies Possible?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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If one were to investigate the underpinnings of religious studies, or, in other words, to undertake a sort of meta-religious studies (a study which would be twice removed from the actual subject matter of the discipline) one would find that the main contemporary criticisms, by both lay students of religion and the academic community at large, have been primarily twofold. The first stock objection, possibly somewhat more popular twenty years ago, was that ‘religious studies’ was simply not to be considered an autonomous academic discipline worthy of recognition as an independent ‘department’ in a university curriculum. In short, the pejorative implications were clear in the behind-the-back finger-pointing which was conjoined with whispers of ‘interdisciplinary’. The second major criticism of the ‘discipline’ of religious studies has been a polymorphous diversity of twists on the old theme – ‘Oh my God, they are practising what they preach’. The impetus of this criticism is in large measure, the fear, by various sectors for various reasons, that the student of religion is somehow ‘doing’ (as opposed to simply studying) religion and, what's more, doing it inside the hallowed halls of the university.
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References
page 295 note 1 See Jordan, Louis Henry, Comparative Religion: Its Genesis and Growth (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clarke, 1905).Google Scholar
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page 296 note 2 One fine example is the ‘Wingspread conference’ held on 16–18 February 1978 in Racine, Wisconsin, where Walter H. Capps said on page 1 of his unpublished Religious Studies in an Age of Limits: Notes from the Wingspread Conference, ‘The purpose of the conference was to create a perspective on where the academic study of religion is in relation to where it is supposed to be, and, perhaps, where it may be in the future.’
page 297 note 1 An excerpt from a short prefatory remark to a study done on religious studies in Ontario, Canada by Ninian Smart entitled The Nature of Religious Studies.
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page 300 note 4 My italics.
page 300 note 5 Ibid. p. 253.
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