In Theorizing Religion today, trying to refer back to our Cone discussion, engage students' papers on the problematic discourse of "world religions," and set the stage for Hume's Natural History of Religion, I tried something new. Several things. Not sure they worked quite.
From the Cone discussion I had us explore the differences between theology and religious studies on the question of who's Christian. Is it enough to take people's self-ascription for it? Cone, like most theologians, is making normative claims about who's really Christian - as is his job, as a theologian. Building on his understanding of the Gospel he can reject the self-ascription of white supremacist Christians. (Some of them would, no doubt, return the favor.) Politically, personally, religiously I want to draw the line where Cone does - but can I as a scholar? I will inevitably need to make some sort of claims about what makes someone an X, but I can't base it in theology, though some theological categories and distinctions will inevitably be used. Difficult. In any case, I should let my little Jonathan Z. Smith daemon nag me every time I exclude something or someone from my field of study. Am I not just making things easy for myself by ignoring the hard cases?
Of course, there are more options than "Christians" and "scholars of religion" defining and interpreting "Christians." Christians have ways of understanding other religious traditions, too - and, if they're operating as theologians, legitimately so. That's a whole other kind of study of religions! Could you imagine, I asked the class, a Buddhist religious studies? An Islamic one? My Islamic example was al-Shahrastani, my Buddhist David Loy, though students imagined others - a prophet for each society, bodhisattvas manifesting in all sorts of traditions.
The segue to Hume was his resolute rejection of the biblical study of religions which asserts that the first human beings were monotheists (as is revealed to us in Genesis), and that the story since then (also narrated in Scripture) has been a sad tale of idolatry and superstition leading generations to lose sight of that truth, until God speaks again to call his people back to the truth, which they or their progeny proceed to lose sight of... Hume's view that polytheism arose organically from primitive human ignorance and fear, eventually building up into a sort of monotheism before falling back into polytheism, knocks the biblical view on its side, the wheels still spinning but going nowhere.
What I was getting at, a little fumblingly, was that there is no one stance for "religious studies," detached from views of the human story (or absence of story), theological or otherwise. I might have invoke my mantra - that religious studies is the discipline that reminds us there is no consensus on the real. We can't just study religion (or anything else) without some assumptions about what we're studying. How can we determine what's religious, or who's Christian then? With fear and trembling. And awareness of the different accounts to which human religious history lends itself. We can start with self-ascription, including our own. What kind of study of religions are we committed to?
One might capitalize here on the vagueness of the name "religious studies" (not present in Religiouswissenschaft but I think quite present in sciences religieuses). Is it studies (of various sorts) of religion? Or is it religiously-informed studies of something - religion, even!?
From the Cone discussion I had us explore the differences between theology and religious studies on the question of who's Christian. Is it enough to take people's self-ascription for it? Cone, like most theologians, is making normative claims about who's really Christian - as is his job, as a theologian. Building on his understanding of the Gospel he can reject the self-ascription of white supremacist Christians. (Some of them would, no doubt, return the favor.) Politically, personally, religiously I want to draw the line where Cone does - but can I as a scholar? I will inevitably need to make some sort of claims about what makes someone an X, but I can't base it in theology, though some theological categories and distinctions will inevitably be used. Difficult. In any case, I should let my little Jonathan Z. Smith daemon nag me every time I exclude something or someone from my field of study. Am I not just making things easy for myself by ignoring the hard cases?
Of course, there are more options than "Christians" and "scholars of religion" defining and interpreting "Christians." Christians have ways of understanding other religious traditions, too - and, if they're operating as theologians, legitimately so. That's a whole other kind of study of religions! Could you imagine, I asked the class, a Buddhist religious studies? An Islamic one? My Islamic example was al-Shahrastani, my Buddhist David Loy, though students imagined others - a prophet for each society, bodhisattvas manifesting in all sorts of traditions.
The segue to Hume was his resolute rejection of the biblical study of religions which asserts that the first human beings were monotheists (as is revealed to us in Genesis), and that the story since then (also narrated in Scripture) has been a sad tale of idolatry and superstition leading generations to lose sight of that truth, until God speaks again to call his people back to the truth, which they or their progeny proceed to lose sight of... Hume's view that polytheism arose organically from primitive human ignorance and fear, eventually building up into a sort of monotheism before falling back into polytheism, knocks the biblical view on its side, the wheels still spinning but going nowhere.
What I was getting at, a little fumblingly, was that there is no one stance for "religious studies," detached from views of the human story (or absence of story), theological or otherwise. I might have invoke my mantra - that religious studies is the discipline that reminds us there is no consensus on the real. We can't just study religion (or anything else) without some assumptions about what we're studying. How can we determine what's religious, or who's Christian then? With fear and trembling. And awareness of the different accounts to which human religious history lends itself. We can start with self-ascription, including our own. What kind of study of religions are we committed to?
One might capitalize here on the vagueness of the name "religious studies" (not present in Religiouswissenschaft but I think quite present in sciences religieuses). Is it studies (of various sorts) of religion? Or is it religiously-informed studies of something - religion, even!?
