Do you practice the critical study of religion?

The term 'critical' has become ubiquitous in academia these days. It is always a term of praise, but, for many in the academic study of religion, being critical also provides a marker that distinguishes the kind of scholarship that belongs in the academy from the non-academic approaches that do not belong there. Over the past few hundred years, however, the term has been used to identify very different virtues. In this paper, I distinguish five broad senses of the term. I explain what is distinctive about each one, and I identify tensions generated between them. I close with my own proposal that one can combine all five senses of critique in a single coherent academic field, and that this integrated vision would be the best approach for the academic study of religion.