In Defense of Irrationality: A Critique of Richard B. Miller's Why Study Religion

Richard B. Miller opens Why Study Religion? with a clear statement of purpose: "This book is about theory, method, and purpose in the study of religion, arguing for a course correction in the priorities and ideals that animate the field" (2021, ix). Miller begins his discussion with three questions that have guided the field: "Can the academic study of religion be justified? Should it be included in the curriculum? Do good reasons exist to motivate people to study religion as a profession?" (2021, 3). Miller answers yes to all three, but his book does more than provide these answers. His work is a look at the deeper problem of why scholars in religious studies cannot answer these questions directly, as well as an argument for why they should. My critique of Miller's book interrogates Miller's arguments and assumptions, specifically regarding moral reactive emotions and reason and then examines his understanding of religion itself. I argue that Miller's advocation of religion's connection to critical humanism in order to make normative evaluative statements about religion ultimately limits the range of what is religious and what is human.1 Miller's work is divided into two sections: the problem within the study of religion and the solution, which he argues rests within critical humanism. Miller first sets out the problem—the crisis of identity in religious studies—and demonstrates it through an examination of the six key methods that have contributed to, as he puts it, "a regime of truth." Miller identifies commonalities shared by authors in the regime. First among these is the influence of pioneering religious scholar Mircea Eliade. Secondly, authors have adopted the stance of a disembodied, objective viewer, which has led to the third issue: an inability of religious scholars to engage in normative criticism. All authors, in Miller's estimation, are unable to state the goals, values, or justification for the study of religion and their proposed methodology that answers his questions. In the second section, Miller advocates that the study of religion should deeply engage with critical humanism's goals and values. He answers the opening set of questions using critical humanism, identifying four traits (post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility) to respond to the normative questions posed in the first section of the book. Like Miller's book, my argument is divided into two parts. In the first, I will outline the regime and will address issues raised by the identity of the authors, in particular the contentious inclusion of Manual Vásquez (more on this below), and will then discuss aspects Miller sees as being common to the authors: grappling with the legacy of Mircea Eliade, the tendency to adopt a disembodied point of view, and the inability to provide a justification for religious studies. Part 2 begins with Miller's treatment of Jonathan Z. Smith's chapter on Jonestown to discuss three issues of conflict between Miller and Smith: indignation versus incomprehension, inhumanity, and irrationality. These issues affect Miller's overall understanding of religion and the normative assessment of it. I will then turn to issues raised by Miller's mistreatment of Smith in light of critical humanism and its relation to rationality and the good. Please note that this article discusses sensitive issues such as a sexual crime against a minor, in relation to Vásquez, as well as the death of children in the murder–suicide at Jonestown. Miller refers to the six paradigmatic methodologies as "the regime of truth," using Michel Foucault's turn of phrase to refer to the implicit patterns of thinking about religion and religious scholarship that are enforced by the academy. Throughout this article, I will refer to these methods, the authors chosen to represent them, the texts under discussion, Miller's assessment of the methods, as well as my own critique of Miller's use of them. For these reasons, I will provide a brief outline of each approach within the regime. The first method Miller examines is the interpretive–comparative method epitomized by Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown by Smith. Miller describes the interpretive–comparative method as one that attempts to make sense of a piece of data (provide an interpretation) by using an analogy (compare the data to something more familiar). It is the scholar's job to understand what at first appears to be incomprehensible. Miller focuses his criticism on the last chapter in Smith's work, "The Devil in Mr. Jones," where Smith analyzes the utopian logic of the "White Night" of the Jonestown by use of analogies to Euripides' Bacchae and Oceanic cargo cults. The second method, the scientific explanatory method, is represented by Donald Wiebe's collection of essays, The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy. This method studies religious phenomenon through the principles of scientific inquiry, seeking to explain the underlying causes of religion. Miller discusses and criticizes the ideal of the detached, impartial viewer of religion, as espoused by Wiebe and his method. The theological–anthropological method is exemplified by Paul Tillich's work Systematic Theology. Unlike previous methods, the theological–anthropological posits that there are unique aspects of the human relevant to religion. The method is theological because it "views human beings as possessing an innate tendency to transcend our finite condition to makes sense of life's meaning" and anthropological because it is "premised on an account of human nature and a view of religion as a human creation" (Miller 98). Miller discusses key terms from Tillich, such as ultimate concern, while highlighting how this method adds existential and psychological depth to the study of religion. Miller turns to the sociologist of religion, Manuel A. Vásquez, to explain the materialist phenomenological method. Vásquez's influential work, More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion, is used as the central text of this method. This approach is materialistic in that its focus is on the body. It is phenomenological because it considers observable practices. Vásquez's discussion advocates for a focus on embodiment and historical context. In his chapter on the genealogical–ideological method, Miller turns to three writers and one of each of their works: Russell T. McCutcheon and his work Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia; Timothy Fitzgerald and his work The Ideology of Religious Studies; and Saba Mahmood and her work Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. This method is genealogical in that it traces the history of the values embedded in the study of religion, "seeking to expose the political biases, contingent interests, and institutional allegiances embedded in the practices or in the study of religion" (Miller 148). It is ideological in that it seeks to uncover how religion (and the study of religion) has worked to naturalize, and thus conceal, certain practices and partialities. The final method Miller deals with is the philosophical-evaluative method, which is represented by two philosophers of religion: Stephen S. Bush and his work Visions of Religion: Experience, Meaning, and Power and Kevin Schilbrack and his work Philosophy and the Study of Religion: A Manifesto. This method is philosophical in that its methods are "self-reflexive, analytical, dialectical, and conceptual" (Miller 192). It is evaluative, unlike the other methods previously mentioned, in that it seeks to critically assess religious beliefs and practices, as well as scholarship on religion. Miller criticizes aspects of the regime (the detached view of the scientific approach, e.g.) while advocating for others, such as the attention to embodiment and the interrogation of presumed values within the field. Miller is also aware of the limitations in the regime, noting that it is "a largely male canon" that comes out of "a specific scholarly" demographic, noting that as a field, philosophy of religion "has failed to spark assessment and critique from a range of perspectives" (39), thereby placing the blame on the subject area itself, rather than the historical conditions that have created an overwhelmingly white, male, Western academic body in the first place. Miller provides three reasons for this narrow range of authors: each "(1) articulates a free-standing and comprehensive theory; (2) aims to guide the study of religion across a wide range of practices, contexts, and beliefs; and (3) has visibility and influence in the field" (10). While the inclusion Vásquez makes sense—he undoubtedly meets the criteria—his presence is questionable due to his criminal history. In 2016, Vásquez resigned from his position as chair at the University of Florida after pleading no contest to video voyeurism of a teenage family member. While this scandal does not impact his ability to meet Miller's criteria, it does raise many questions, questions that arise out of Miller's own work. In Why Study Religion? Miller asks one to consider the role of moral reactive emotions, such as indignation, resentment, and repugnance, in forming normative assessments; however, he does not apply this reflection to his own work. Miller presents his objective reasons for Vásquez's inclusion with a disembodied voice, a trait he criticizes throughout this work, that does not address the issues that the crime raises, the moral reactive emotions that arise, or the current historical moment where debates over cancel culture rage. Miller's own criticism of the scientific explanatory method's espousal of a disembodied view and interpretive–comparative's seeming ability to rationalize issues that create moral disgust, along with his embracing of the self-reflective insights of genealogical–ideological and the philosophical-evaluative methods that call for religious scholars to address hidden assumptions and normative values within the field, is at odds with Miller's detached manner in which he rationalizes the use of his selected authors. One is left wondering what his failure to address this means and how a book that deals with such issues as power and ethics, and particularly the power of scholarship to shape the field, can neglect to address this issue. Several compelling and long-standing ideas about religion were first articulated by Eliade. In works such as The Sacred and the Profane, Eliade laid out universal patterns and categories that allowed scholars to engage in cross-cultural discussions about religion rather than individual traditions. Concepts such as hierophany and the axis mundi, as well as the use of binaries such as the sacred and profane, cyclical sacred time and linear profane time, have permeated the field. Eliade also addressed the subjective religious experience in that he thought that humans created religion (symbols, rituals, experiences) in order to experience the sacred at certain points in time. This subjective, private, nature of experience, combined with Eliade's insistence that religion has an irreducible quality, one that cannot be explained by art, psychology, sociology, or any of the other disciplines, meant that religion was unverifiable, "thereby having us rely on data that cannot but be private and inaccessible to public interrogation" (Miller 39). Eliade's description of religion subsequently created the idea of an ahistorical, apolitical, disembodied phenomenon. Subsequent to Eliade, we see the rise of such topics as embodiment, as well the role of power, struggle, and change within religion. Criticisms of Eliade include his lack of contextual specificity and location, as well as his failure to see how religions are enmeshed in history, politics, and bodies. Several methods confront Eliade's notion of religion as an irreducible and ahistorical category by showing how religion must be understood through the lens of ideology, power, gender, and economics. The notion that religion is sui generis and self-explanatory is challenged by several authors, such as Mahmood, who shows that religion is historical and locative by providing an ethnographic account of women's attempts to resist and subvert ideology during the Egyptian Islamic Revival movement. McCutcheon's work directly addresses the idea, and cost, of seeing religion in a sui generis manner: "the discourse of sui generis religion shares in the legacy of imperialist rhetoric by manufacturing religion simply and exclusively as an interior, private, intellectualist, and essentially unique belief system related to history and context only tangentially and contingently" (quoted by Miller 154). Miller points out Eliade's influence by showing how many scholars focus on criticizing and/or revising Eliade's ideas about the human aspect of religion. While Eliade draws attention to the "homo religious" in his work, the theological–anthropological method develops the idea of human situatedness, stressing how religion addresses existential concerns of meaning and purpose. Subsequent methods, such as the material-phenomenological method, bring attention to the role of lived experience, thus confronting the disembodied nature of Eliade's account. McCutcheon states that the effect of this legacy is "to represent people in a disembodied and decontextualized way, making it all too easy to turn them into objects or commodities of little historical or social consequence" (quoted by Miller 154). This concern with humanity, of scholars and adherents, is one of the strongest themes to emerge in the regime's response to Eliade. Miller finds that in the works of the authors mentioned, the values, commitments, and justification for studying religion are largely unspoken, with writing "absent" and "unaware" of a purpose or, if it is provided, it is in a manner that is "undisciplined, haphazard, and quixotic" (7). Miller, for example, finds Smith silent on "matters of purpose" (47), Vásquez is unable to "provide an independent, freestanding justification" for his theory (142), while Bush "echoes the silences of the status quo about values and scholarship in the field" (211). All in all, Miller finds that the authors "fail to offer a clear goal for studying religion" (32). Miller traces the history of this reticence by turning to three influential ideas that have impacted the field's inarticulation of goals, all of which have worked to produce the ideal of the disembodied and disinterested author. Miller contends that this ideal is responsible for the silence on matters of purpose, endemic to the study of religion, is due to decidedly religious factors. Following the arguments of Charles Taylor, Miller argues that the disembodied, God's eye view is rooted in the spiritual and somatophobic, Western ascetic tradition. Miller also sees the protestant idea of justification by faith, with its idea of grace over works, as creating the notion that justifying human action is itself a hubristic act. Most compelling of these ideas is the final one, which addresses the field of religious studies within the academy itself. Miller turns to Max Weber's 1917 essay, "Science as a Vocation," to explain the origin of the disembodied stance. Weber argues that religious studies must be conducted in a disinterested manner in order to ensure objective, reliable, unprejudiced results. To establish itself as a legitimate field of study and, ironically, to keep itself separate from a theological disposition, the study of religion adopted this "God's eye," disinterested stance common to the scientific approach. For Miller, this is a problem for two reasons: it makes it difficult for scholars in the field to provide justification for the study of religion, and it makes it impossible for scholars to make normative statements about religion. Miller's opening set of questions asks whether the study of religion is justified and whether there are good reasons to study it. Throughout the introductory chapters, Miller argues that religious studies "lacks a well-conceived goal" (35). Miller's investigation into the various authors' failure to provide a justification seems disingenuous given that the authors do give reasons for their work, reasons that Miller himself provides. Three examples will suffice. The first, the interpretive–comparative method, has the goal of understanding: the task is "to make sense of data" that is defined as religious (Miller 46). The second, the scientific explanatory method, has the goal of finding the origin of religion, seeking to "uncover the human need for religion or motives for carrying out religious practices so that we can understand religion's origins and persistence in culture" (Miller 72). The third goal, the philosophical-evaluative method, is expressed by McCutcheon's statement that the study of religion is ideological: the task of the scholar is to explain how religions "are, like other human institutions and practices, ideologically driven model of social formation" (quoted by Miller 231). To state that the task of religious studies is to understand religion—How do we understand it? How do we define it? What causes it? How does it shape us? —seems like an acceptable goal for religious studies. If we compare the study of biology, which looks to understand life, or physics, which seeks to understand matter through movement and time, then it would appear quite reasonable to think religious scholars should seek to understand religion. However, the goal of understanding religion is not, to Miller, an acceptable answer to why one should study religion, and in the course of his argument it becomes clear that his question regarding justification is linked to normative evaluation. This line of inquiry appears throughout Miller's text, such as when he states, "There is … the need to establish a conceptual clearing for putting religious forms of power and authority under normative scrutiny" (27f). Otherwise, "it leaves others' avowed accounts of the good unquestioned" (27). Miller argues that this has happened because of the legacy of a disinterested scholarly stance: scholars have "insisted upon studying religion in ways that are disinterested, and free of normative interrogation and evaluation" (6). More pointedly, in his chapter on Smith and the interpretive–comparative method, Miller states that rather than ask a question of interpretation that stays free of normative judgment, he wants to ask, "Is religion good or bad for people?" because doing so "takes it down from a pedestal and submits it to the authority of humanistic norms and values" (69). To discuss normative evaluations, Miller enlists the help of philosopher Peter Strawson and his influential essay "Freedom and Resentment." Strawson argues that emotions arise not only in response from others but also from social expectations. Miller summarizes Strawson's position in the following way: we "feel resentment and indignation in response to wrongdoing done to ourselves or others and, more generally, to behaviors and attitudes that are heedless of expectations of good will" (61). Strawson makes clear that his analysis is based on social relations between peers. He gives examples such as exchanges with colleagues and friends and perhaps the most common, chance interactions between strangers. These people, Strawson states, are "sharers of a common interest" in "ordinary inter-personal relationships" (Strawson 2008 6f). The situations Miller discusses, on the other hand, are religious in nature. Whether it is a relationship between an adherent and the divine or the human equivalent of the divine, the issue is the same: the relationship is not one of equals in ordinary relationships where there are expectations of everyday behavior. The relationship between humans and the divine (or its representative) is hierarchical, often sexist, and is not conducted with reciprocal social expectations. The demand, for example, for Abraham to sacrifice his son, as well as the Jewish ritual duty to remove one's foreskin, do not fall into the realm of ordinary social transactions and notions of civility. Strawson sees moral reactive emotions, such as indignation or resentment, as the basis for being able to view the actions of others in an unbiased manner, and Miller agrees: "Normativity is the groundwork out of which detached, impartial thinking arises" (67). Miller argues that scholars need to engage normative criticism and offers moral reactive feelings as a resource for thinking this through. Miller argues that our feelings are "cognitive," stating that they are "cultural artifacts" that "display our internalized cultural norms" (22). Miller states that these moral reactive feelings are those "that are felt in response to or departures from respect and goodwill in social situations" (47). Such feelings are, thus, potential resources for scholars in Miller's view, as evidenced by his criticism of Mahmood's lack of engagement with her own feelings of repugnance toward patriarchal practices: "She denies herself reasons for exploring her reactive feeling of repugnance as one resource of thought" (189). In a similar vein, Schilbrack argues that normative values are ineliminable and implicit in all scholarship and, thus should be made explicit. Schilbrack states, "If evaluative approaches are not part of the academic study of religions, the result will not be that evaluations are not included in the field, but rather that the evaluations already present in religious phenomena will be presented uncritically" (230). While I agree that moral reactive emotions do arise in encountering religion and that one should present these evaluations critically and self-reflectively, Miller does not provide a compelling example of how to do this in his engagement with Smith's essay. In fact, Miller's own response displays the problem of how moral reaction emotions can prevent comprehension. Miller's problematic treatment of Smith is illustrative of his arguments concerning justification, moral reactive emotions, and normativity, as well as the role of reason. My analysis will examine three issues that arise in Miller's reading of Smith's account: Smith's focus on incomprehension rather than indignation, Smith's dehumanizing account, and the role of rationality. To begin: the Peoples Temple Christian Church was a utopian religious community in Jonestown, Guyana, led by charismatic leader James Warren Jones. On the evening of November 18, 1978, the "White Night," also known as the Jonestown massacre, occurred when over 900 people died by murder–suicide. Smith chooses this event for analysis because it was largely ignored by the academic press while it was sensationalized by the popular press. Within religious circles, leaders distanced themselves from the event and Jones, labeling Jones a "false messiah" and the Peoples Temple as a cult in order "to segregate these uncivil phenomena from religion" (Smith 1984, 110). To these responses, Smith argues that we must try to understand this challenging event and not place it outside the bounds of religion. Smith describes Jonestown as "the most important single event in the history of religion, for if we continue, as a profession, to leave it ununderstandable, then we will have surrendered our rights to the academy" (Smith 1988, 104). Smith sees the goal of religious studies to be one of comprehending of the activities of humans, no matter how strange or upsetting. To leave something as unintelligible, as "inhuman," would be to admit defeat. Our task is to follow the Enlightenment impulse, an impulse "which refused to leave any human datum, including religion, beyond the pale of understanding, beyond the realm of reason" (Smith 1988, 104). By reason, Smith means that we must try and understand what he calls the "utopian logic" of the people who followed Jones's orders. Smith's desire to understand Jonestown means that his attention is on the people who actively executed the violence, on themselves and others, rather than those who were clearly passive victims of the violence (e.g., infants and children). Miller criticizes Smith's account on the grounds of moral reactive emotions, writing that in it, "we have no sense of how the White Night might arouse not only incomprehension but also rightly resentment and indignation among Smith's readers and those who were personally affected by the loss" (66). Miller, following Strawson, states that feelings of resentment and indignation arise "in response to wrongdoing done to ourselves or others and, more generally, to behaviors and attitudes that are heedless of expectations of goodwill" (61). These moral reactive emotions tell us about the normative assumptions we carry. Indignation and resentment are, thus, examples of "reactive feelings that arise in response to others' actions and attitudes," which "derive from a judgment we make about how they regard us and other people" (61). The focus on indignation (wrongdoing done to the children) and resentment (how these people regarded their children without goodwill) tell us that Miller's focus is on the readers responding to the event. Miller accuses Smith of "not rendering an assessment" on Jonestown, of failing to address the "moral horror and moral umbrage" that is experienced in reading about it (68, 65). It is clear, however, that Smith is aware that Jonestown is upsetting, stating that it is a scandal that "perturbs the assumptions of civility" (Smith 1988, 104). Smith also addresses his lack of assessment of Jonestown before his analysis, stating there is one "final preliminary issue: to interpret, to venture to understand, is not necessarily to approve or advocate" (Smith 1988, 104). Smith defines religion as "the relentless human activity of thinking through a situation" (55), and in the case of the members of the Peoples Temple who took their own lives and the lives of others, Smith is looking to understand and empathize with, rather than provide a moral judgment, of their "final solution." This is relevant because Miller accuses Smith of ignoring the emotional aspects of the event to pursue his aim of comprehension. Miller incorrectly states that Smith "omits that fact that over a quarter of those who died at Jonestown were children," reproachfully adding, "That omission is telling" (65). Smith, however, does, in fact, address the number of children who died, detailing that 914 people died, including "two hundred and six infants and small children that had been administered poison, most by their parents" (Smith 1988, 108). Miller's attempt to have his readers focus on the death of the many children seems like an attempt to arouse feelings of indignation in response to an inaccurate accounting of Smith's chapter. In doing so, Miller not only misrepresents Smith but also ends up proving that emotionality can lead to incomprehension. This is similarly demonstrated in Miller's accusation of the lack of humanity in Smith's analysis. Miller states that "in Smith's account we gain no understanding of the human cost imposed by the White Night on the families, friends, and loved ones of those who died at Jonestown" (66). Miller's criticisms are unsubstantiated in that they ignore several humanizing aspects of Smith's account, including Smith giving voice to those personally affected by the loss of life in his chapter. For example, Smith begins his treatment of Jonestown with the words of a minister who lost two daughters and a grandson who asks us to remember, "Jonestown people were human beings" (Smith 1984, 11). Smith includes the words of one of the women at a meeting on the last night at Jonestown, saying sadly and hopelessly, "We might as well end it now" (Smith 1984, 120). We read the broken words of the first reporter of the scene, who found "Little babies lying on the ground. … Near their mothers and father. Dead" (Smith 1988, 117). Rather than ignore the humanity of the people of Jonestown, as Miller accuses him of doing, Smith places the humanity of the members of the Peoples Temple at the forefront, stating that "the recognition of the ordinary humanness of the participants in Jonestown White Night must certainly be the starting point of interpretation" (Smith 1988, 111). Smith clearly sees Jonestown as presenting a challenge of interpretation: how do we make sense of its utopian logic? The death of the children can only "make sense" if we understand the utopian logic of Jonestown, where everyone and everything, from the infants to the dogs to the fish to Mr. Muggs, the pet chimp, were killed in a final act of desperation, not unlike the Oceanic cargo cult of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides where "a variety of stratagems were employed, the most desperate, such as on Santos, involving a destruction of everything the natives own as if, by their dramatic gesture, to awaken the White man's sense of obligation to exchange" (Smith 1988, 119). Likewise, the frenzied violence of the Euripides' maenads in reaction to the intrusion into their domain, is used to discuss how the Peoples Temple understood their space and its violation by outsiders. Smith's desire to understand the White Night means that he focuses on the reasoning behind the actions of the human players of Jonestown. In contrast, Miller's focus is on indignation at the death of the children of Jonestown, places it outside any logic, outside the realm of understanding, describing the event as "anti-human" and accusing Smith of using examples (the Bacchae and the cargo cults of Oceania) that are themselves "irrational" and thus do not prove any sense of rational thinking: "His effort to reduce incomprehension about the White Night asks us to think horizontally by way of examining similarities and differences but not substantiv