In the first and second sections of this three-part post—introduced here and expanded from an article in the Encyclopedia of American Religion—I first sketched the contours of the academic study of religion (ASR), or Religious Studies, then proceeded to discuss tensions among its creation myths: who were its heroes and villains, in what contexts, as the field emerged?
This final section continues to work from a premise that ASR, the overall field, is more a space for debate than a settled body of content. I also return to the structural issue I flagged at the outset: most ASR scholars float between its networks and at least one other field such as history or classics. This implies a need for most individual scholars to satisfy colleagues in two different fields, and to do so without falling through cracks between the disciplines or getting whiplash from writing for both.
The salient adjacent field for my own work, as well as for most readers of the encyclopedia where the earlier version of this essay appeared, is the study of North American religions. This in itself is a huge cross-disciplinary network, weighted toward US cultural history and interdisciplinary American Studies. The sociology and anthropology of the US, as well as the daily news, also loom large.
To me it seems obvious that all ASR scholar/teachers who work in the US are necessarily “along for a ride” of caring about the US cultural-historical context and how religion fits within it. This must have some fairly strong claim on everyone's priorities—whether or not everyone is happy about the situation—because they and their students are based here. Some colleagues will push back against this contention--especially the part about priorities. People who study the US, they will say, are based in global history, too-- whether or not they are happy about that situation-- and there is a greater need to learn about global issues than about things closer to home. Whoever wins this debate, it is at the very least obvious that those in ASR who focus on US religion must be along for a "ride" of thick attention to US history and culture, even if mileage varies for other subfields.
This section explores how Americanists in ASR relate to the wider field. I will proceed in dialogue both with ASR's big debates about method and priorities, as well as three specific areas of challenge. Near the end I will pose what I intend as a provocative and somewhat polemical question: is it time for ASR's Americanists to think seriously about leaving ASR as their home base, seeking greener pastures? Or, since that may be overstated and too prone to compare actually existing departments to hypothetical ideal ones, let me restate this more precisely. Under what conditions is it a lesser evil—even a positive good—for scholars of American religion to move toward institutional configurations more decoupled from the limitations of ASR? When should they stake stronger claims for priority within ASR and/ror shift more of their energies toward programs shared across multiple departments? I recommend making such decisions contextually, school by school and scholar by scholar. Still, the challenges are acute enough that it is time to ponder the trade-offs openly.
Debating Possible Futures of Religious Studies
Everyone in ASR wants to move beyond at least a few of its legacies that we noted earlier: unsatisfying generalizations, anti-pluralist sensibilities, heavy-handed Christian propaganda, entanglements with colonialism, racist forms of evolutionary theory, and so on. But there is little consensus about which parts of ASR’s past to purge and which to revise and upgrade.
To these longstanding sore points, we might add that ASR often errs toward a rosy-tinted assumption that religions are by default healthy and good. This is an understandable by-product of scholars’ desire to present the traditions they study at their strongest and most nuanced, rather than kicking down straw versions. Although blowback against such positivity can also swing the ASR pendulum in the opposite direction, still we might compare ASR overall to literature professors who assign exemplary novels or scientists who teach the strongest theories.
The problem is that every tradition takes variable forms, with meanings fundamentally shaped in dialogue with multi-leveled contexts— forms that may be in sharp conflict and not always the ones that scholars consider exemplary. We will badly misunderstand religious traditions if we treat them either as monolithic blocs or as something to presumptively valorize without nuanced attention to contexts in which they take their forms.
Probably we should stress that religious systems are like languages—open-ended enough that competent speakers can use them to tell truths or lies, and that true utterances can equally well be profound or trivial, immensely valuable or utterly pointless or non-constructive. Here again, ASR lacks consensus about what counts as true and useful. Meanwhile, ASR’s tendency to assert objective or value-free stances—an assertion we should not take at face value, but rather as an aspiration to break with ASR’s past and/or rule out appeals to special religious revelations—makes it hard to discuss these matters openly.
ASR proceeds as a multi-leveled debate about all these issues. Scholars of US religion—in focus here as the most likely readers of this article—certainly do not speak as one bloc in these debates, and not all would agree with my emphases. Still I will raise concerns that are salient for them in debates about ASR’s present and future.
Neglecting Native America
For those who focus on North America from a base in ASR, one concern—an alarming scandal or an opportunity to fill a gap, depending on whether one feels optimistic—is ASR’s common neglect or distortion of Native American traditions. This problem is worst for the millennia before 1492—especially for the largest and most literate traditions of Meso-America. Within ASR’s world-historical frame they deserve, but rarely receive, attention on par with ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, South Asia, and China. Less neglected, but also often lost in the shuffle, are contemporary forms of Native traditions inside the current borders of the US. Often all these groups are absent or painfully oversimplified in surveys, as well as low priorities for hiring.
Insofar as ASR scholars engage these cultures, they rarely treat them as “world” traditions but lump them with small-scale (“less evolved”) societies and non-literate stages of history. Studies of living Native traditions—whether from today’s US or elsewhere in the Americas—downplay cross-pollinations with Christianity such as Mayan popular Catholicism. Native religions appear as noble but extinct oral traditions or as minor footnotes in studies of Christianity. Whereas ASR departments would be mortified to offer Bible courses by teachers with no training in Biblical languages, it would not even occur to some departments to worry about the language skills of their teachers on Native America—although top programs would require such skills for a research position if they offered one in the first place.
On a happier note, ASR’s comparative global range puts it in a strong position to explore the place of Native Americans within its larger agendas, as compared to kindred disciplines. The question is whether ASR will prioritize walking through this open door.
Demonizing “Theology”
A second concern, relevant across many ASR subfields but affecting the study of US religion more than most, is ASR’s long-running debate about “theology” vs. “scientific study.” Beyond two banal points that both teams in this battle have long presupposed—that ASR (1) rejects indoctrination and (2) aspires to analytical standpoints “outside” any single tradition (that is, it compares differences with aspirations to accuracy, although neutrality is unattainable)—this discourse is often stale, having largely been sidelined in disciplines adjacent to ASR for decades. No less than the most famous scholar in ASR’s meta-theorizing ranks, Jonathan Z. Smith, spoke as follows about a distinction between “theologically” teaching religion and “scientifically/objectively” teaching about religion:
[This distinction has] value for carving out a place for the study of religion in the university, but is of dubious value beyond. It is, quite frankly, a ploy….Not only is the putative distinction naive and political, it is also anachronistic. It speaks out of a period when the norms of theological inquiry (as experienced in the West) were largely governed by an intact canon, when the ideology of human sciences was chiefly governed by the goal of achieving “objectivity” or “value-free” knowledge. The most superficial reading of much contemporary theological discourse will reveal that the notion of an intact canon has largely been abandoned…[while] an equally superficial reading [in the human sciences] reveal(s) that the subjectivity of the individual researcher now stands at the very center of the critical enterprise. Kant, Marx, Freud, et al., have won over both sides. [“‘Religion’ and ‘Religious Studies’: No Difference at All,” Soundings 71 #2-3 (1988), 233.]
Smith wrote this in 1988, and since then the trends have deepened. Granted, we should note his qualifier “much contemporary theological discourse” and remember that AAR meetings, as well as many departments in religiously-affiliated schools, include confessionally-committed theologians—largely although not solely Christian—who have limited comparative interests and who use methods and sources incommensurate with ASR as defined in the first section. Some share the nostalgia for pre-ASR curricula that we noted in the second section. Their ongoing presence fuels the “scientific” team’s passion for boundary-maintenance.
Still, Smith is correct that there is a wide spectrum of gray on a continuum between whatever remains of “pure confessional” theologies and “pure scientific” methodology. This cannot be polarized into two camps without a great deal of distortion, including ripple effects for studying many facets of US religion.
Many ASR scholars who beat the drums against “theology” most loudly consider it a point of pride not to do the work that informs Smith’s judgment—neither to read contemporary academic theology, nor engage with cultural critics and public intellectuals whose interests and presuppositions overlap with it. These self-styled "critical" scholars often stipulate narrow or caricatured definitions which lead them to posit that all theology is irrelevant—not part of ASR at all except as a fifth column—and define scholarship in a way that excludes the just-mentioned cultural critics as polluted by such theology. Of course, the anti-theologians have their own values and priorities, but their polemics against trafficking in normative commitments often result in paralysis when seeking to assess and debate them.
As long as ASR (1) includes conflicts internal to US Christianity within its purview, as well as conflicts internal to smaller groups like US Judaism or Buddhism, or (2) treats ethics as a dimension of religion, or (3) wishes to debate its own priorities openly—starting from a basic question of why it is good to study any subfield of ASR as opposed to any other subject whatsoever—then questions about normative issues will not disappear. Since ASR does assume that the first two issues are salient, and since values will be relevant whether or not we acknowledge them, there is little choice besides tackling these matters despite their historical baggage.
ASR’s long-running polemics about “theology” do have value for pressing scholars to be self-critical and reflexive about their assumptions and methods. However, the dubious framing and stagnant aspects of the debate also create distractions that hold scholars of US religion back by throwing them out of step with many of their best interdisciplinary interlocutors. In many other fields that study US culture, scholars have long taken for granted a stress on being situated and self-conscious about the politics of knowledge production. Translating the insights of such scholars into ASR discourse, if it works at all, is akin to running a race with lead shoes. It creates a whiplash effect, as strictures from self-styled ASR gatekeepers jerk one back toward unproductive discussions long settled in kindred discourses.
Seeking Depth of Study in American Religions and Their Salient Contexts
A third concern for ASR Americanists is the practical impact of ASR’s drive toward breadth and balance—covering East and West, North and South, comparative/theoretical and thickly grounded, and (leading back toward ASR’s founding principle of focus) ancient texts and contemporary practices. Aspiring to such range It is entirely commendable as far as it goes. Nevertheless, it has a mixed practical result for quality study of North American religions.
Consider that in 1965, at ASR’s birth, a paradigmatic department of medium size—say, seven tenure lines—allocated resources along the lines of chapters in a famous study by Paul Ramsey: (1) “Old Testament” [that is, Hebrew Scriptures], (2) New Testament, (3) History of Christianity, (4) Ethics, (5) Theology [implicitly Christian], (6) Philosophy of Religion, and (7) Comparative Religion. [Ramsey, ed., Religion, Prentice Hall, 1965.] Likely more than one person from categories 3-6 studied US materials, providing synergies in their reading and teaching interests.
By 2000, such a seven-person department had likely transformed into (1-2) two tenure lines from Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, Early Christianity, or Ancient Near East; (3-4) two lines from among religious thought, ethics, philosophy of religion, or the modern history of Western religions, including any specialists on US religious diversity and/or contemporary Christian thought and practice—and let’s pause to consider, this not solely implied that Ramsey’s first six categories had been cut back to four, but also that hiring any specialist in US religions at all was becoming uncertain—and finally (5-7) three lines expanded from Ramsey’s lonely comparative lane to cover whatever remaining subset of world history that the department could manage, including Islam, religions of South and East Asia, and the entire Southern hemisphere. Large departments had more room to maneuver, perhaps doubling this recipe—but small ones might shrink the scenario to one position each for Bible, "Western religions," and everything left over.
Let's be clear, much was good about such changes. Let's also be clear that the US curriculum was under tangible stress.
Turning to the present and future, all seven of these faculty will retire. Beyond unrelenting pressure from administrators to downsize payrolls and defund all priorities in tension with neoliberal business models, there will be additional pressure inside ASR departments for more rebalancing. How can Western religions command four of seven positions, when this entails zero-sum choices like Africa vs. China or Hinduism vs. Islam? These are hard choices. Still, for a department in the US, it arguably makes sense to defend some priority of depth in US religious diversity—including contemporary Christianities, although not precluding things like forms of Islam and Hinduism in the US.
Departments competing with ASR for student interest, such as Political Science or Music, naturally prioritize strength in US politics over African politics or Western musical forms over South Asian ones—simply as a matter of course, however much they aspire to global coverage. Political scientists do not hesitate to prioritize study of Democrats and Republicans, even though these are only two among thousands of political parties. If such departments did not create welcoming spaces for students seeking careers in politics or music—which does not preclude comparative study or clarifying the differences between warranted truth and propaganda, playing well or poorly—they would be setting up to fail.
ASR could think in similar ways, but often it does not. We can easily imagine our model department downsized to five, including only one person charged to cover most contemporary Christianity (US or global), most Western religions during the past 500 years (US or European), and most American religious difference/debate that the curriculum can engage. Native religions would only be one among many things lost in this shuffle.
Even in larger departments with ample coverage, related pressures apply to courses practically available to students. Suppose a religion major requires ten courses, with eight remaining after a broad introduction and a methods course. Suppose four or five of these eight are blocks out breadth in some combination of (1) Asian and African religions, (2) studying the Bible and/or Jewish/Christian/Muslim origins, (3) thematic explorations like “religion and gender” that might not include much US material. Suppose, finally, that a few students wish to focus within a North American subfield, so they take a survey of US religious history. Let’s be optimistic and assume they bring to it a strong US history survey from high school or college, although in my experience this is atypical.
This is a fine platform on which to build a concentration in US religion, especially if a student has electives available or undertakes a double major.
But consider: this adds up to seven or eight courses. Only two or three are left in the structure of the major to address (1) background work in US history or social science, (2) most work on Christianity or Western religious thought since 1500 (beyond surveys) that may be needed for a concentration, (3) any specialized work on method and theory, (4) a capstone course if the department desires it, and (5) semester-depth studies of topics in US religion such as race, sexuality, popular culture, Native American religion, culture war, or the history of specific traditions or writers.
Students may have to skip all of these options simply to save two courses for a senior thesis. They may have to skip a thesis to take one course on religion and race. They may need to move directly from a thin US survey into being set up to fail in writing a good thesis. In effect ASR students are learning that a concentration in US religion should either be deferred to graduate school or be pursued as optional or extracurricular with respect to a core ASR major. What ASR “concentrates” on is not much more than global and historical breadth—likely a cafeteria line of stand-alone courses, each presupposing little and building toward little.
So my question returns: should ASR Americanists advise their serious students--or perchance themselves-- to try a different department?
The prospects for depth of study in US religion are not necessarily brighter in most History or American Studies programs. Historians tend to be narrower in disciplinary range, and American Studies is often diffuse. Both of these fields may be standoffish about prioritizing religion and have weaker coverage of global issues, with their own variants of cafeteria lines.
Also, in a medium-sized History or American Studies department, a faculty specialist in US religion might again be a one-person subfield with unmanageable coverage. Nevertheless, such a specialist would probably not be the only person in the department who read and offered courses on the US—a common occurence in ASR—and might face less pressure to teach upper level courses that cannot presuppose any other college-level work in US culture. Whereas ASR scholars who “only” specialize in North America (all of it!) may be perceived as suspiciously narrow by ASR compatriots, colleagues from History departments would perceive them as spread outrageously thin. Here again there is a whiplash effect if one works across both fields.
Recall our hypothetical ASR major who hit a ceiling for a US concentration (not in imaginable courses, but time to take them) after a US survey plus one or two other courses, so that a satisfying senior project was unlikely. Meanwhile, a History major with three or four US history courses (including a survey) would be seen to have, at best, a minimal floor under a weak US concentration—likely with headroom above it. For a student in interdisciplinary American Studies, a package of four courses would not even constitute a minor. Competing with such prospects, it is hard for ASR to follow through on its promise to be a framework for studying US materials in satisfying depth—at least short of planning on graduate school or a double major.
Double majors are good. But doesn't it seem odd, or certainly less than ideal, if ASR majors who hope to focus on religious issues in their own socio-historical contexts need to carve out so much space to study outside "their own field”?
Other ASR subfields like Buddhism or African religion might well press similar questions about how to attain satisfying depth. Possibly we could grant that the cases are parallel; if that would not make the Americanist concerns go away. But are there not strong reasons to assert some degree of priority, for departments based in the US, to enable students to pursue a greater depth of study in US religious diversity and/or contemporary US Christianity? The point is not to require this focus for all students, much less abandon breadth as one priority, but simply to make ASR unambiguously attractive for those who desire a US focus. Today’s students and faculty navigate amid a range of intersecting departments. If the students must seek depth outside ASR, while meanwhile the faculty members’ interlocutors are as much from outside the field as inside, when does affiliation with ASR cross the line from an enabling home base to a straitjacket?
We circle back to the evergreen question broached in the first section-- whether ASR over-prioritizes breadth and generalization, as opposed to nuanced studies of concrete cases of religious contestation. Can ASR, in practice, provide sufficiently robust attention to the cultural-historical contexts of its intellectual work to ensure its quality—perhaps even to clarify the baseline meaning of the work, shaped in dialogue with its contexts? Even if someone doubts that such attention to context is strictly necessary—although this necessity does follow if we presuppose scholarly methods and cultural theories that I for one find compelling—is it not at least desirable? If ASR makes well-grounded studies of North America difficult, people will naturally inquire whether the grass is greener in adjacent fields—especially in places where the work across the fence is closer to a cutting edge and ASR people are struggling to catch up, burdened by extra baggage.
There are pros and cons all around. ASR pairs well with many double majors. Its quality of attention, both to US religious diversity and to religious aspects of global issues, are ahead of the curve compared to most kindred disciplines. Importantly, its methodological discourses are often richer, especially compared to History and Sociology—a major strength for situating scholarship in its relevant contexts. Still, we have seen how ASR’s theorizing is not always commensurate with the best interdisciplinary conversations, and how students and scholars in ASR may be disadvantaged when it comes to thick contextualization of their subjects.
The Promise and Limitations of ASR
Overall, ASR is impressive, both judged by its efforts to promote accurate knowledge of global religions, as well as by the best-case genealogies that we could construct from the various components we have noted. As a framework for studying North American religions—and by extension many other topics—ASR has fine potential because its range of subjects and analytical approaches complement each other in an appealing combination of structure and flexibility.
Nevertheless, we have seen how aspects of ASR create challenges for scholars in and of North America. Three legacies imply that such scholars may maneuver within uncomfortable limits: (1) putting disproportionate weight on foundational canonical texts of “world” religions (often with Native Americans left out) as opposed to contemporary practices; (2) building claims to legitimacy on a drive toward generalization and comprehensive global coverage; and (3) frequent standoffishness toward studying US Protestantism and/or contemporary Christianities in other flavors, despite the importance of these traditions for US culture, including their ongoing weight in ASR (with or without unhelpful nostalgia).
Thus, although ASR may well remain a preferred base for future work in US religions, this is not a given. Much hinges on the priorities and modes of analysis from department to department and scholar to scholar. How ASR responds to these challenges will impact both its future contributions to the study of North American religions, and to ASR’s evolving contours as an arena for wider study and debate.
For Further Reading
This is a highly select bibliography, designed not to consistently showcase arguments that I find most persuasive, but to offer a representative set of sources informing the above analysis.
Cady, Linell and Delwin Brown, eds. Religious Studies, Theology, and the University. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Cherry, Conrad. Hurrying Toward Zion: Universities, Divinity Schools, and American Protestantism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)
Hart, D. G. The University Gets Religion: Religious Studies in American Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
Herling, Bradley. Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion New York: Continuum, 2007.
Hinnells, John, ed. Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Idinopolus, Thomas and Brian Wilson, eds. What is Religion? Origins, Definitions, and Explanations. Leiden: Brill, 1998.
Marsden, George and Bradley Longfield, eds. The Secularization of the Academy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Miller, Glenn, and Robert Lynn, “Christian Theological Education,” Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience ed. Peter Williams and Charles Lippy (New York: Scribners, 1988), 1627-1652.
Nye, Malory. Religion: the Basics. 2nd. ed. New York: Routledge, 2008.
“The Santa Barbara Colloquy: Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.” Special Issue of Soundings 71 #2-3 (1988), 207-387.
Sharpe, Eric. Comparative Religion: a History. New York: Scribners, 1975.
Stone, Jon, ed. The Craft of Religious Studies. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
“Symposium: The Future of the Study of Religion in the Academy.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74 #1 (2006), 1-192.
Taylor, Mark C., ed. Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
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