The discipline of religious studies within the academy has appeared in the last century and, due to the nature of the subject, has been burdened with both the tensions of its past and the questioned relevancy of its future. The birth of the "secular" study of religion could be said to be a consequence of Modernity through many attempts, sometimes in the name of proselytizing western Christianity, to define "religion" and classify religions. Questions of defining and classifying religion continue into the 21 st century as the study of religion defines and classifies itself throughout academia. As the discipline of the study of religion positions and re-positions itself, students of religion must also be aware of their own perspectives on several different levels. When Jonathan Z. Smith speaks of an "act of second order, reflection imagination" that every student of religion should engage, he exhorts present and prospective students of religion to be conscious of what religion is and how that consequently relates to how one goes about doing the study of religion.

            The beginnings of the scientific study of religion has set a mood to which religious studies has pursued: the "founders" of what is intrinsically an interdisciplinary study were scholars who were trying to explain and define religion based in their own disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. From simple definitions of religion - "the belief in spiritual beings" - to protracted definitions - "religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries," these investigations have offered an array of definitions and classifications to help us better understand what religion is. A flagrant problem, however, with these interminable lists of definitions attempting to explain religion is that their boundaries are either too narrow or too broad, excluding certain "religious activities" or including too many "human activities." Two different approaches to religious definition are commonly outlined as substantive and culturalist. These two schools of thought directly affect how a scholar studies religion and must be reflected on by every student of religion. In the final seminar of a theory and method in religious studies course, one student proffered the early workings of a substantive theory that would attempt to explain religion by means of a physiological essence; although the presentation was only a rough sketch, the boundaries of the definition already appeared to be too general, incorporating a vast assortment of human activities to the point where there was little or no difference between religious activities and those of sporting events or music concerts.

Underlying the dichotomy between the substantive and culturalist approaches is a tension between describing religion through essence or religion as concept . Substantive definitions often breakdown into value judgments on religion , such as in the extreme negative case of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who proclaims that religion 's key attribute is ignorance. The clash with popular culture - and in some cases, the scientific community - needs to be recognized by students of religion: manufactured divisions between "religion" and "spirituality" and attempts to characterize "religion" as either inherently bad or good are commonplace in the media and throughout the public sphere.   Religion in such cases is endowed with a sort of overarching entity, and is not only factually misleading, but is rarely useful to the scholar of religion. In order to profitably reflect on religion , a student must recognize the shortcomings involved with definitions and either chose to hold fast to a definition of religion, defend it, and proceed with his or her studies, or otherwise come to understand religion as an amenable indicator of certain human activities, partial to redesign and reconstitution.

This academic understanding of religion as a semantic concept is not intuitive, especially outside of religious studies scholarship, and the entire endeavour of the discipline leads to awkward and misinformed questions: Are you a theologian? So you're religious? How does someone outside "the faith" study "the faith"? Whether it was the academy that created religion as a solidified term or not is inconsequential to the question between doing religion and studying religion . Orsi points out that this is a fundamental dichotomy in religious studies: there are "them", the religious , the practitioners, those that identify themselves with some sort of practice relating to some transcendence, and "us", the religious scholars, the scientists, those that have identified and demarcated a class of human activities considered religious . The ability to recognize and articulate to yourself and others this relationship is necessary to the process of second-order reflection. Religion begs to be studied within the academy because of its universality, meanwhile being wary of the proclivity of pluralism or attempting to subjugate all religions under a common banner.

The ideas of definition, classification and inside/outside dichotomies consequently give an outline of what the discipline of religious studies is , but does not address how an individual engages with his or her subject. Tweed and Orsi display in their recent works that they are acutely aware of and attempt to address specific problems involved in positioning oneself for the study of religions . Tweed explicitly states that our etic observations often imply a hypocritical authority on religious activities despite the reality of inescapable partiality -we must, Tweed continues, be honest with our partialities and recognize our "blind spots," seeing ourselves as wanderers among familiar and unfamiliar terrains. For many students, necessary intrusions will be mandated for research and the objectification of religions and their practitioners must be qualified with respect and a sense of honest inquiry. Students must train themselves to inquire into religious activity in a manner different then those within religion while being aware that our questioning is still a result of our paradigm and that the social ramifications of "science studying religion " does not differ much than when " religion studies science" (even in a limited way: "Have you ever prayed to Saint Jude?" ). Can we, when acting as "students of religion", experience religion ? No, and nor should any apology be necessary - what is required is an awareness of how this positions ourselves in relation to those within religion . In the end, our "second order, reflective imagination" consists of how we approach religion itself and how we position ourselves as outside observers of religion .

 

Bibliography

For specific citations, please contact me at brad.richert@ualberta.ca

Arnel, William E. Definition . Guide to the Study of Religion . Eds. Braun & McCutcheon. London: Cassell, 2000.

Braun, Willi. Religion . Guide to the Study of Religion . Eds. Braun & McCutcheon. London: Cassel, 2000.

Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Orsi, Robert R. Between Heaven and Earth . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Pals, Daniel L. Seven Theories of Religion . New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion . Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988.

The Root of All Evil . Richard Dawkins. Channel 4 UK. 2006.

Tweed, Timothy A. Crossing and Dwelling . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.