Religious Studies News

Since religious traditions have been expressions of some of humankind’s highest aspirations for the good — and for significant portions of the world's population they continue to playthat role — it stands to reason that the study of religion should be a "non-negotiable part" of any liberal education program (Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, Harvard University Press, 1997: 145). Moreover, the way in which religious studies is taught must explicitly embody the values of liberal education. To be true to the liberal ideal, religious studies must not promote one conception of the good over another, but rather foster a sense of epistemological humility and tolerance, leaving choice to the individual. It can do so by incorporating into its curriculum three distinct steps in line with the three goals and methods outlined above. I call these three steps Description, Critique, and Metacritique.

Description: Expose students to the variety of religious traditions of the world, and do so as accurately as possible and with intellectual charity. Such is the task that has gone under a variety of names: hermeneutics, phenomenological  description, verstehen, ethnology, etc.

Critique: Train students to use those intellectual tools that allow them to critique the claims of rival religious conceptions of the good. Broadly speaking, there are three critical approaches to the study of religions, all of which are comparative: exclusivistic or conservative theological critiques; perennialistic or liberal theological critiques, which see religions as species within the genera ‘religion’; and naturalistic critiques as represented by the social and natural sciences. Generally, exclusivistic or conservative theological critiques have been avoided in state-sponsored religious studies programs in favor of perennialistic and naturalistic approaches; however, to be true to the liberal education ideal, they, too, should be addressed.

Metacritique: Introduce students to the disciplinary debates critical of the preceding three critical approaches (thus, "meta" or philosophical critique) and of the task of description. Metacritques include inter alia, Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and postmodern critiques.

The problem with the typical religious studies course is that the three steps of the liberal education process are not adequately differentiated, and the distinctions between them are not made clear to students. The undergraduate religious studies theory course is one of the obvious places to introduce these steps, and to make the liberal education process explicit. In my version of theory course, I begin by laying out the rationale for liberal education in general, which for many students is the first time they have heard any such rationale (or even been made aware of the fact that they are engaged in liberal education!). I then divide the rest of the course between sections on the history and methods of description (e.g., various classical attempts at definition and typology; Joachim Wach’s discussion of verstehen; Ninian Smart’s “seven dimensions,” etc.); classical theoretical positions (e.g., Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Freud, Eliade, Douglas, Geertz, etc.); and contemporary metatheoretical critiques of both descriptive categories and classical theories (e.g., Asad, McCutcheon, Reuther, etc.). Finally, in order for students to better understand the force of both the critiques of religion and the metacritiques, I have found it indispensable to introduce some basic concepts of the philosophy of social science, especially as presented by Hollis (Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2003), who delineates clearly four basic theoretical moves in the social sciences (i.e., holistic interpretive, individualistic interpretive, holistic explanatory, individualistic explanatory).

While this may sound like a lot of ground to cover in a single semester, I have found that once students have been given a clear roadmap by applying the goals and methods of liberal education, they respond to both the approach and the material quite well. What’s more, students leave the course with a set of intellectual tools that allows them to better understand just about any other course they may subsequently take at the university.