Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXII/4

The Academic Study of Religion

Sam Gill
J. HE EMERGENCE OF an academic study of religion has been disappointing despite the boost it received thirty years ago when religion entered the curricula of state-supported American colleges and universities. The academic study of religion as envisioned here is distinguished by several bounding criteria: 1. The academic study of religion must not depend upon or require of its researchers, teachers, or students any specific religious belief or affiliation, race, culture, or gender. 2. The academic study of religion must be sensitive to multi-culturalism: the awareness that there are many peoples, cultures, and religions, none of which has any exclusive claims to be made with regard to religion as an academic subject. 3. The term "religion" must be understood as designating an academically constructed rubric that identifies the arena for common discourse inclusive of all religions as historically and culturally manifest. "Religion" cannot be considered as synonymous with Christianity or with the teaching of religion to members of specific traditions. "Religion" must not be thought of as the essence of the subject studied. "Religion" is not "the sacred," "ultimate concern," or belief in god (or some disguising euphemism). There is nothing religious about "religion." Religion is not sui generis. There are no uniquely religious data. 4. The methods of the academic study of religion are necessarily comparative. Religion is a category whose subdivisions are categories that demand comparison. Comparison must be understood as the play of fit and non-fit, of congruity and incongruity, rather than conformity with a pre-existing pattern. 5. Once it is comprehended that religion designates a significant aspect of a major portion of the human population throughout its
Sam Gill is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0292.

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history, dual motivations arise for the study of religion. On the one hand is the desire to appreciate, understand, and comprehend specific religions in their historical and cultural particularity. On the other hand is the opportunity afforded by the broadly comparative category, religion, to learn more about ourselves as human beings. The academic study of religion, as distinguished by these criteria, has not enjoyed adequate development. As an academic discipline, distinct from the religious study of religion, it has failed to advance any sustainable body of theory, any cadre of religion theorists, any substantial body of literature. The inability to articulate the academic study of religion and the unsatisfactory defense of the place and role of religion studies in the modern academic environment have placed departments of religion at a low level of budgetary priority and at risk in many colleges and universities. In contrast, what has thrived is the religious study of religion, that is studies in which the scholar is studying her or his own religion or a religion other than his or her own primarily for the purpose or purposes stipulated by the religion studied rather than the purpose or purposes stipulated by the academy. In other words, the study of any religionwhether one's own or anotherin order to find God, to transcend desire, or any other reason that religious practitioners have for their religious practices, including study, is a religious, and not an academic, study. These religious studies have long American traditions and intellectual heritages spanning centuries. However, it will be contended that the success of these kinds of religious studies has likely contributed to the repressed and retarded development of the academic study of religion. While there is a correlation of the academic study of religion with the university and the religious study of religion with seminaries and theological schools, both approaches occur in both kinds of institutions. These approaches are presented here as clearly distinctive, yet there is no intent that either has inherently greater value than the other. While these approaches have different bounding conditions it is possible that some scholarship may simultaneously adequately satisfy both sets of bounding conditions. This essay argues that it is important to make this distinction and it focuses on the approach labeled the academic study of religion, arguing that this approach should be the approach fostered by the American Academy of Religion. When the academic study of religion fails to understand and to accept the demands of

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being a member of the academic community, which it does routinely, it embraces vagueness; it invites its own dissolution. When the academic study of religion ignores the bounding conditions stated above, it abandons its own distinctiveness. From the mid-nineteenth century the development of many academic fieldsnamely the social sciences and, to a lesser extent, the humanitieshas emerged from and been motivated by boundary conditions similar to those listed above. Such boundaries are demanded of modern academic studies. Whereas such intellectual activities as Christian studies and Jewish studies precede and parallel the academic study of religion, there are no counterparts to these studies in the social sciences. The social scientific and humanistic academic enterprises often emerged by carefully and sometimes dramatically presenting positions in opposition to Western religious views and thereby, in contrast to the academic study of religion, won a measure of freedom and had to respond to the necessity to carefully distinguish and define themselves in terms of theory, method, and model. The academic study of religion, rather than arising as a field in its own right, has taken less inspired and productive paths. It has either simply extended to new culture areas the methods and theories of the pre-existing approachesthat is, of the religiously motivated studies of religionor it has borrowed social scientific methods and theories by which to study religion. The former approach produces studies modeled largely on long heritages of the study of Western religious traditions in which history, text, and thought are emphasized. The latter produces studies that are difficult to distinguish from the fields in which the theories and methods are borrowed. Neither approach has been much shaped by the boundary principles outlined above. The academic study of religion has often failed to acknowledge what it is. It is academic; it is Western; it is intellectual. This identification does not mean the academic study of religion must be narrow-minded, insensitive, irresponsible, closed, or exclusive. It does mean that rational discourse is the basic mode of communication. It does mean that the boundary conditions stated above must be respected. A brief critical discussion will illustrate the difficulties of the approaches taken. Illustrative of the failure in developing the academic study of religion are the ways in which the question "what is religion?" has

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been approached. Often the question is approached by attempting to establish a mandate by setting forth an essentialist definition of religion prior to the study of the subject. This strategy correlates with the heritage of the religious study of religion where the limits of one's study are commonly distinguished by the nature of the data. To study Christianity, for example, is simply to study things Christian. Perhaps it seemed logical to extend this principle to the general academic study of religion by arguing that the academic study of religion is the study of data that are distinctively and uniquely religious. A definition of the essence of religion would function for the academic study of religion, it might be supposed, something like doctrine or a statement of faith. But this definitional approach requires that the religious distinctiveness of the subject be described and defended at the outset. The unreachable goal towards which the study is directed, that is to understand what religion is, is required as a precondition to the study. Defending the sui generis character of religious data retards the academic study of religion. The effect is a degenerating discussion of definition while ignoring the specific historical and cultural subjects. Theory remains aloof or is the mere restatement or explication of the statement of essence. Founding the study of religion on essentialist definitions encourages discourse conducted on the authority of vision, insight, or experience rather than rational discourse, hypothetic inference, and the application of scientific method. Persuasion overshadows criticism. Academic freedom is replaced by the requirements of conformity. Inarguable results produced by relying on some religious givenness displaces academic responsibility. Comparative study becomes the instrument of academic proselytization, of exacting belonging. Diversity and difference are unwelcome. The development of the study of religion that borrows its theories and methods from the social sciences (or other disciplines) faces the problem of distinguishing itself from the sources of borrowed theories. The problem has been tackled in several ways. One common defense has been to place the difference in the scholar, by holding that religion scholars are endowed with some special sensitivity that permits them to use scientific theories to the end of studying religion non-reductively, that is, studying religious data as religious in contrast to some reductive interest such as that of social scientists. Perhaps as newcomers to academia there has been a failure to recognize that all academic studies are reductive.

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Reduction means to render data in terms of a chosen perspective, to look at a subject from one perspective or theory among many. This anti-reductive defense is based on an embarrassing mystification of the academic study of religion and an unfortunate misunderstanding of academic methods. Another defense has been to proclaim that the academic study of religion is distinguished as interdisciplinary or eclectic in its approach. This defense is a veil that attempts to conceal the dearth of religion theory. Another way to show how the academic study of religion has failed to adequately develop is the treatment of comparison. The Christian missionary mandate has fostered much comparative study of religion as a method of expanding Christianity. Inevitably Christian terms, categories, and ideas have been fundamental to the comparative enterprise. The patternists' use of comparison was an extension of this Christian understanding of comparison, both in terms of the categories used and the attitude toward difference. For patternists the criteria for the religious are determined at the outset of the study. They use comparison as the method, the lens, by which to recognize or identify "the religious" in the history of religions. In the academic study of religion comparison has invariably meant fit or congruity to pre-exiting patterns or criteria. The academic study of religion has tended to restrict comparison primarily to finding similarity among different traditions, but this most often has meant concocting similarities and ignoring differences. Too much of the study of religion has been simply the extension of broadly accepted patterns and categories to data not yet rendered in terms of these patterns. This comparative approach diminishes both the broad advancement of an understanding of "religion" and the potential for seeing the distinctiveness of the specific. To hold that the academic study of religion is necessarily comparative does not mean that every study must compare more than one religious tradition, a form now rather rare. Comparison is at the root of all learning, but knowledge is not advanced or of interest except where difference is discerned. Unfortunately differences and incongruities, if not simply ignored, have usually been explained away. The comparative operations of the academic study of religion correlate with the broadly held essentialist view of religionthat is, that religion is "the sacred" or "ultimate concern" and that the attributes of "the sacred" and "ultimate concern" are goodness,

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purity, and unity, or of the center or origin. From this approach, to study religion means to discern and appreciate these desirable qualities in any culture. This is not only a weak form of comparison, it is also a form of imperialism because it reduces all cultures to reflections of these ideas. Furthermore, this comparative approach coupled with a vague and romanticized understanding of religion tends to be blind to any potentially negative (as evaluated in these same terms) aspects of religion, blind not only to the Jonestowns and the Wacos, but also to the poverty, suffering, oppression, and violence that are aspects of almost every religious tradition. In light of these remarks I want to look at specific areas within the academic study of religion. The heritage for the academic study of small-scale exclusively-oral peoples is deeply rooted in the nineteenth century evolutionist studies in which the cultures then labeled "primitive" were sought for evidence of religion-in-the-making or the ur-religious or the original monotheism. The heritage for this study is the same as that for modern anthropology and the comparative study of religion. These particular cultures and traditions were the principal subjects for anthropological studies well into this century and remain highly important to that field. There is significant potentialnow more than everto the academic study of religion in the study of these cultures, a potential to move beyond the limitations set forth above. Nearly everything about these cultures and their religions questions the assumptions and approaches of the academic study of religion. For example, where the academic study of religion has depended almost exclusively on texts (scripture) and thought as reflected in writing (theology, doctrine, historical documents), none of these forms of data exists in exclusively-oral cultures. One finds instead dance, ritual, movement, objects. Such awareness of difference could lead to the development of techniques, methods, questions, and perspectives that are not only applicable to exclusively-oral cultures, but that also open new and important areas within the study of all religious cultures. The implications for the academic study of religion, for even this one issue, are enormous. Courses on Native American religions are taught in colleges and universities throughout North America. The American Academy of Religion has recognized the area for the last twenty years. Still, during this period few scholars (certainly less than a dozen) within the academic study of religion have devoted the majority of

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their time to research and publication on the subject. Almost none of these scholars, few as they are, did their graduate schooling in the academic study of religion, but rather such fields as history and anthropology. Notably most of this group who did their graduate work in religion studied other traditionsHinduism, Chinese religions, Christianityrather than Native Americans. During most of this twenty-year period the only PhD program where one could study Native American religions was not even in North America, but in Sweden. Currendy only a couple religion programs in North American support study of Native American religions at the PhD level. The topics that have engendered lively discussion in recent years in the study of Native American religions are revealing. Discussion has frequendy centered on whether or not active participation in the study of Native American religions should to be restricted to those who speak Native American languages and have field experience. Another topic of recent interest is whether nonNative Americans should study and teach Native American religions. This discussion from start to finish has explored issues that divide along ethnic and racial lines (as even the question was formulated). In terms of academic criteria both these issues are misplaced. The question of whether or not one ought to know one's subject in terms of the language and cultural setting seems to be the question of whether or not the area of study is an academic one. For there to be any discussion is evidence enough that it is not. Such a discussion could certainly not occur in other academic disciplines. If one wants to participate in the academic study of Judaism, it hardly needs to be stated that minimally one must know Hebrew. If one wants to contribute to the academic study of contemporary Hindu ritual practice, one must spend time in Hindu communities and know the relevant languages. The issues of language and field study are linked to the second issue of whether or not non-Native Americans should teach (and it seems it would imply also to conduct research on) Native American religions. Here the matter has become almost purely political and has failed to raise any substantive academic issues. If the academic study of religion understood both what it means to be academic and how discussions permitted under the "religion" rubric are bounded, these topics would be irrelevant. There is no question that one must know languages and do field studies as appro-

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priate to the methods and requirements of the larger academic community. Racial or cultural distinctions cannot possibly be relevant criteria by which to determine research or pedagogical competence in any sub-field. To hold that one race, ethnicity, or gender is somehow privileged in any area of academic study is racism and refutes important gains that have been made this century. These discussions of academic qualifications are hopelessly sidetracking. Without the guiding academic context that should be provided by the broader academic study of religion, too often scholars in such small fields as the academic study of Native American religions simply talk about what seems personally most important. Native American members of the group often talk about their experiences, both in terms of their own tribal cultures and as Native Americans (oppressed minorities in academia as well as American culture). Non-Native Americans frequently talk about their attempts at academic studies of Native American religions, usually as tangential to a scholar's principal area of study, attempts that may be motivated by a romanticism of Native Americans or conducted without adequate language and field support. The results of these discussions are usually not engaging or productive enough to support a vital academic field. The publications, few as they are, by members of this field tend to be as much discussions about what should or should not go on in the field, who should and should not contribute to the field, as they are productive studies of Native American religious topics. Discourse about the shape and nature of a field are important and inevitable to the health of a field, but it is a sure sign of the tenuousness and irrelevance of the field when this talk about the field becomes the principal topic of discussion, the main product of the field. Graduate study in Native American religions in departments of religion has been minimal. The trend seems to be to develop programs that encourage primarily those who are ethnically Native American. This predictably replicates the pattern of the religious study of religion. Who other than Native Americans should study Native American religions when it is primarily Christians who study Christianity? The studies of Native American religions permitted and encouraged in graduate programs are usually highly specific studies of the students' own heritages and traditions conducted in ways that little engage the broader academic study of religion. A good many of these students engage only cultural materials absent of conversation with any academic community

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whatsoever. Such students graduate without being able to, or even wanting to, participate in the larger discourse of the academic study of religion. This strategy, which also applies, in part, to many religion sub-fieldswomen and religion, African religions, Protestant Reformation history, African-American religions, etc. will prove disastrous. The result is the population of the academic study of religion with scholars and teachers who know only their own specific area and who study it primarily because it has religious and political importance to their personal religious, racial, ethnic, or gender connection with it and whose studies are evaluated more on the authority granted by religion, race, gender, or ethnic identity than upon academic performance. This strategy amounts to the abandonment or betrayal of the academic study of religion. Were the study of religion adequately established as an academic field, the tradition of academic studythe heritage of issues, concerns, problems, questions, literatures that comprise the largerfieldwouldframe and shape the discourse that identifies the specific studies as belonging to the academic study of religion. The studies and programs presently permitted and encouraged suffer in quality and in terms of realizing the potential of their academic contribution because they are conducted in the context of an academic field that provides little guidance, discipline, or support. Almost all of these studies are informed most by fields other than religionthat is, by fields such as anthropology, sociology, literature, philosophy. Further evidence of the failure of the academic study of the religions of exclusively-oral small-scale cultures: within the academic study of religion, the study of Australian Aboriginal religions has been virtually abandoned, as have the small-scale cultures in Oceania and Indonesia. South and Central Americas and Africa fare little better. Around the world the religions of thousands of small-scale societies that are labeled peasant and folk receive almost no attention. The enormous potential of this area of study remains. In most cultures around the world, save Western traditions especially Christianity, religion and dance are practically synonymous. From the ancient Bharata natyam of South India to Hopi Kachina dances, from Jewish wedding dances to the Sufi whirling dervishes religion is not only expressed, but enacted, through dance. For many religious traditions, religion without dance is unimaginable. Yet, perhaps because of the paucity of dance in

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Christianity (and to a lesser extent other Western religions) and given the influence of Christian (and other Western religious) studies on the academic study of religion, dance, and to a somewhat lesser extent other forms of physical movement and ritual, have received almost no attention by students of religion. It is astonishing that the academic study of religion has been so little attentive to the religious forms by which most religious people identify their own religiousness. Certainly in the academic study of religion there is a movement to be attentive to the study of ritual and more recently to the study of the body. Yet even these concerns suffer by being framed in the Cartesian and Western dualismmind/body, spirit/body. For example, much of the present study of ritual is understood as the study of the non-textual in contrast with the textual, the study of nonverbal action as opposed to speech and writing. This bifurcation is at best misleading. The impoverishment of these areas of study demonstrates that the academic study of religion remains almost exclusively a religious study of religion in almost exclusively Western religious terms. The studies of the religions of small-scale exclusively-oral cultures; the studies of movement, ritual, and dance of all religious cultures has been almost entirely yielded to the purview of the social sciences. The studies of women and religion, African-American religions, and Asian religions are not exempt from the described limitations of the academic study of religion. The distinctiveness of what presently exists as the academic study of religion than arises by default. It is a field that has little theory, but welcomes the appropriation of theory from all other fields. It is a field that takes pride in being eclectic, but consequently suffers in the absence of a distinctive academic tradition. The study of religion suffers as an academic field because its practitioners confuse making clear boundaries with rigidity, narrow mindedness, and intolerance. For many who identify with the discipline, the academic study of religion is no more than a cumbersome rubric that makes possible what to them is the actual study of religion, their specific area of study conducted commonly as a religious study. The American Academy of Religion is for many but a rambling organ that hosts annual meetings for a large variety of specific religious study groups. The bulk of the productivity of the academic study of religion goes on through these small and often highly rigorous

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groups. The overwhelming majority of work in the Academy is the business of specific studies within the Christian tradition. For the majority of the members of these organizations, however they might define the term, religion is effectively synonymous with Christianity. Too few of these studies contribute to or benefit from the concerns that ought be the main business of the academic study of religion.1

My thanks to Delwin Brown and Lynn Ross-Bryant for careful readings of this paper.