The Road Not Taken in the Academic Study of Religion

As I settled in to write about the field of "the study of religion" under the rubric "Religious Studies: Whither and Why?" I realized that this is what I have been doing most of my academic career. Since 1975, with the presentation of my first paper to the twelfth quinquennial congress of the International Association of the History of Religions on the possibility of establishing a "science of religion," to my The Politics of Religious Studies in 1999 describing the uphill battle against theology by scholars interested in establishing "religious studies" as a distinctly different kind of academic enterprise, to my latest collection of essays on The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University published in 2020. Over those years, I have also been pestering administrators in universities and professional associations in the field to promote the study of religion as a scientific enterprise, that is, describing and explaining publicly observable religious practice, behavior, and belief. A reprise of the intricacies of that long argument and political activity accompanying it is simply not possible in a brief essay. What I think might be helpful in understanding the burden of that argument, however, is paying a little attention to an important but neglected American scholar who attempted to bring to American universities new European intellectual developments that historian of religion Eric Sharpe described as locating the field in "this-worldly categories" rather than "transcendental philosophy" (Sharpe 1975/1986, 24). In my review of the literature reporting the discussions and debates about what the study of religion might amount to in the context of the modern university, I have been uncomfortable with the term "religious studies" because it carries overtones of the activity of religious devotees committed to providing a "life-enhancing" religious education in the modern secular university. I also found the phrase "the study of religion" equally problematic because of its generic and amorphous character, opening the field to the possibility of adopting a politically- or religiously-inspired intuitive understanding of something often called the "essence of religion." These designations for the field make it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the discipline as a scientific enterprise focused on the pursuit of knowledge about religions and religion from apologetic enterprises involving sociopolitical and religiospiritual activities in aid of fostering a meaningful existence or, alternatively, as a form of political emancipation in freeing society from the burden of religion. These categories make it seem that scholars in the field have only two roads available to them; they can only be caretakers or critics of religion and, therefore, preachers or public intellectuals rather than religiously neutral scholar-scientists—a road, I have argued, that has for the most part been ignored (if not demeaned) by scholars in the field. I do not deny that elements of the scientific study of religious thought and practice can be found in these intellectual entanglements of politics and religion; I only claim that these enterprises are not appropriate pursuits in modern research universities. In the literature on the history of the development of 'religious studies' as a new scientific discipline we have been examining, the term science of religion (Müller, Tiele, Tischauser, Jordan) is for all practical purposes interchangeable with the term history of religion (Réville, Saussaye, d'Alviela, Tiele, Moore) and study of religion (Jastrow). What does this term science mean in this context, beyond the free and impartial spirit of inquiry? Plainly, it was intended to suggest the emergence of a discipline of study comparable to the sciences of anthropology and philology (among the Geisteswissenschaften) and even to the natural sciences. It means the thoroughgoing application of a principle of criticism to all religion(s) considered as phenomena of human experience (hence Religionswissenschaft rather than wissenschaftliche teologie). (Welch 1985, 186n2) Few scholars, I think, will dispute that the natural sciences have been incredibly successful in accounting for the natural physical universe in which we live. Nor are there many who will claim that the scientific explanations we have of our biological and social worlds are bogus knowledge claims. The fact that all human thought is, in some senses, infused with human interests does not justify a claim that all epistemological enterprises—all human knowledge claims—are, so to speak, equally subjective. I think it is also generally recognized that the university, although a public institution, is not the "public realm," open willy-nilly to the public for the free expression of ideas. It is, in that sense, an "ivory tower" in that scholar-scientists who inhabit the institution draw a strict boundary between objective analysis on the one hand and "critical theory" and partisan advocacy on the other. The modern university's task, that is, is neither polemical (bringing students to a level of moral and/or spiritual illumination that will assist them to live a flourishing life) nor emancipatory (subordinating science and scholarship to political agendas on the assumption that everything is political including the study of religion). The temptation to inflate the importance of the profession in these ways must be resisted lest the university, as sociologist Robert Nisbet has put it, be forced to serve "any and all the needs of the social order that at any given moment are likely … to be thrust upon the university" (Nisbet 1971, 135). The only mandate of the modern university is to create rationally and empirically sound knowledge, disseminate that knowledge as widely as possible, and confer on the next generation of scholar-scientists the skills necessary for producing it. In my recent book, The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion (2023), I show that the modern research university is very much a product of historical developments emerging from the ancient Greek creation of a new cultural value of seeking knowledge of the world for its own sake. That new cultural value, I argue, provided the foundation for the Scientific Revolution in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and for the eventual transformation of the medieval and early modern university in the nineteenth century into a peculiar institution that is focused entirely on the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. It is a historical fact that a distinctly scientific study of religion had already emerged as a new academic enterprise and given departmental status in a few European universities by the end of the nineteenth century. Eric Sharpe has shown in his Comparative Religion: A History (1975/1986) that the late nineteenth-century discussions and debates about the study of religion ultimately came to fruition in the organization of an international congress of historians of religion as part of the Universal Exposition that took place in Paris in 1900. In addition to organizing the Paris Congress, these historians of religion established a procedure for organizing a regular series of such congresses, as they put it, "for the purpose of giving to the general history of religions i.e., scientific study of religions the stimulus necessary to assure to it for all time the place it should rightfully occupy in our modern instruction i.e., in our universities" (Réville 1900, 275). In 1950, at the seventh international congress, these historians of religion finally created the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), an association that would be responsible for ensuring the continuation of these periodic academic activities and for promoting the scientific study of religions in higher educational institutions around the world. Drawing on Robert Shepherd's doctoral thesis on "The Science of Religion in American Universities, 1880–1930: A comparison of Six Universities," later published as God's People in the Ivory Tower: Religion in the Early American University (1991), Frank Reynolds, noted historian of religions professor at the University of Chicago, described this academic development as an "aborted attempt to establish Religionswissenschaft a science of religion" in American universities at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries (Reynolds 1990, 8, n7). I think Reynold's assessment of the discipline in America is entirely justified, but this is not to say that all American "students of religion" ignored the scientific developments of the discipline in Europe at this time; they did not. There were many who were actively engaged in those developments and hoped to persuade university presidents and administrations to establish departments for the study of religion of the kind envisioned by the Europeans. These scholars created a variety of institutions to support that enterprise but did not manage to create a professional organization the equivalent of the initiative in Europe to represent them collectively in the promotion of their vision of the field as a scientific enterprise. Rather, the majority of scholars comprising the study of religion as an independent discipline in the US were represented at that time in colleges and universities by the "Association of Biblical Instructors in American Colleges and Secondary Schools" founded in 1909, renamed in 1922 as the National Association of Biblical Instructors (NABI), and renamed again in 1964 as the American Academy of Religion (AAR). It is clear from the beginning that NABI was not committed to the scientific study of religion, which involved a critical examination of religions that were considered human phenomena. As one of its founding members put it, The function of NABI "is the delicate task to propagate the noblest ideals in the face of fundamentalism at one extreme and materialistic philosophy at the other" (Mould 1950, 14). NABI leadership, it appears, was oblivious to the use of terms like "history of religions," "comparative religions," or even "study of religion" as indicating the emergence of a new "science" comparable to the other sciences, including the natural sciences. By mid-century, with the expansion of the new elective curriculum in university education in the US and the transformation of the religious landscape due to increased immigration, many members of NABI were uncomfortable with its image in the wider academic community. Attempting to separate the scholarly study of religion from existential concerns and insisting on distinguishing genuine research from advocacy and indoctrination, the new American Academy of Religion sought to gain greater academic respectability for their field of study. Within the decade, however, there were signs that the AAR was experiencing a crisis of identity despite statements to the contrary. Many of its members were still attached to the older religiohumanistic approach to its subject matter. Claude Welch, President of the AAR in 1970, suggested in his address to the Association, "Identity Crisis in the Study of Religion? A First Report from the ACLS Study,"(Welch 1971) that the field was no longer characterized by a crisis of identity even though he was well aware of the hold of the traditional view of the religiohumanistic objectives of university courses in religion. Welch warned his colleagues that the field was still at risk of falling back into the arms of scholars with confessional interests. Subsequently, William Clebsch argued in his Presidential address to the AAR 10 years on, "Apples, Oranges, and Manna: Comparative Religion Revisited,"(Clebsch 1981) that the Academy was simply not committed to a scientific study of religion, bounded as the sciences are by neutrality and objectivity and restricted to describing and explaining the beliefs and behaviors of religious communities and individuals. By the early 1990s, Barbara De Concini, Executive Director of the AAR, announced that it was no longer possible to talk of a clear divide between scholarship and advocacy in the academic study of religion (De Concicni 1993). That, and the substance and intent of most of the annual presidential addresses from 1965 to the present show, as Welch had feared, that the AAR had fallen back into the arms of scholars with confessional interests who effectively constituted a new humanistic clerisy, performing the educational and pastoral functions once (and perhaps still) carried out by religious leaders. Nearly a decade before the creation of NABI in 1909, there were scholars of religion in the US who were actively involved in the development of the academically/scientifically oriented study of religion. Both Welch and Clebsch focused special attention on Morris Jastrow (1861–1921), a professor of Babylonian-Assyrian religion and culture at the University of Pennsylvania. After acknowledging that religion as a subject for speculation "is as old as human thought," Jastrow noted in his 1893 essay, "Recent Movements in the Historical Study of Religions in America," that "religions as an object of investigation is one of the most recent sciences" that involves the "impartial and broad investigation of facts which alone makes a study historical" had emerged in Europe (Jastrow 1893, 24). He insisted that it was also "beginning to receive more serious attention in the US." Jastrow also pointed out other developments in various American universities, such as the establishment of an annual lectureship in the History of Religions and other organizations in support of what he hoped would form "the nucleus for larger organizations devoted to the promotion of the important science, the interest in which has been strong enough to band together a notable company of scholars" (Jastrow 1893, 29). Although Jastrow had talked of "the growing prominence which is being accorded to the study of religion in the US," he nevertheless opens his 1899 essay "The Historical Study of Religions in Universities and Colleges" with a lament. He found it disappointing, he wrote, that the scientific study of religion "has found an entrance into the curriculum of but a very small number of colleges and universities," and especially so "that even at our leading university, Harvard, a chair for the historical scientific study of religion does not exist" (Jastrow 1899, 317). Nevertheless, he expressed confidence that existing conditions at that point had been favorable, as he put it, "for taking further measures toward promoting this study in our leading institutions of learning." However, that would not happen, he insisted, unless official recognition of the discipline "is taken up" (Jastrow 1899, 324–325) and "special and permanent provision" is made for its support (Jastrow 1899, 317–318). He also placed hope in the idea that the establishment of the study of religion by the European historians of religion in their institutions of higher education and in organizing the very successful first International Congress for the History of Religions in Paris in 1900 would inspire university administrators at home to give serious thought to doing the same in the US. He appears to have thought it possible that the contrast between the high scientific order of the communications in Paris and the substance of the 1893 World's Parliament of Religion held in Chicago, which "emphasized the practical side of religion" and would "prove beneficial in stimulating interest in the historical scientific study of religions at American colleges and universities" (Jastrow 1900, 506 and 504). Although Jastrow had little indication that university administrators were ready to recognize the need for the scientific study of religion or to provide resources for creating independent departments for that purpose, there were a significant number of colleagues in the field who had been attracted to the kind of study of religion established in Europe. He proudly noted that "a number of US foreign correspondents were elected to an organizing committee of the Paris congress and it was gratifying to note the large representation that has been given to this country" (Jastrow 1900, 507). As he outlined in his earlier article on the historical study of religions in colleges and universities, these scholars and others had been giving this new discipline its "due place among university studies" (Jastrow 1893, 27). Other indications that gave him expectation of further support for the discipline included the establishment of an annual lectureship on the model of the Hibbert Lectures in England to bring the results of such history of religions knowledge "to the notice of the general public"; the availability of the National Museum and the Smithsonian Institution as "indispensable adjuncts" to the field; the establishment of "The American Committee for Lectures in the History and Comparative Study of Religions," and other related organizations like a History of Religions Club that held monthly meetings for sharing history of religions research. Jastrow even held out hope that this club might "form the nucleus for a larger organization devoted to the promotion of this important science." Unlike the nucleus of historians of religion in Paris, however, the Americans were unable to form any such cohesive group. Jastrow's long book, The Study of Religion (1902), almost 500 pages, seems to be his last great effort to achieve his dream of getting the historical/scientific study of religion into the curriculum of American universities; that is, of founding a scientific enterprise that adopts the same approach to understanding and explanation for what he calls the religious phases of human history as for the secular phases. There is no need to repeat this argument in favor of establishing university departments for this new science of religion as a natural phenomenon other than to emphasize his point that "no supernatural factors should be introduced." As he put it: "This concession applies to the entire course taken by religion from its earliest manifestation to the latest, and hence, even when dealing with religions in which we are personally interested, we must be careful not to commingle with the historical scientific method such factors as a special Revelation" (Jastrow 1902, 178). Despite his persistent advocacy for the academic recognition of "the youngest of the sciences" (1902, 2), Jastrow was ultimately unable to rally his colleagues to this cause, and I have not been able to find any lasting positive effect of his work on the field in America. However, William A. Clebsch and Charles H. Long, historians and scholars of religion, claim in their Introduction to the 1981 reprint of Jastrow's book that Jastrow did much to refashion the scholarly study of religion. They seem to base that assessment wholly on the publishing success of the book, which was first published in 1901 and then reprinted again in 1902, 1909, 1911, and 1914. There is no doubt that his colleagues among the historians of religion greatly appreciated his defense of their discipline, but there is no indication that the book changed the minds of university administrators about giving the field of "religious studies" the formal recognition Jastrow sought for it. Clebsch and Long also expressed surprise as to "what could account for the book's later near-oblivion" (Clebsch and Long 1981, 12). Nor was interest in Jastrow's proposal evident among scholars in the field. But despite Clebsch's and Long's expressions of surprise, they rightly lay blame for the lack of interest in the volume at what they laconically described as a resurgence of religion. They suggest that there was a heightened interest in existential matters, especially after World War I, which explains the loss of scientific interest in and the academic scholarly study of religions. Since World War II, the scientific-scholarly approach has staged a gradual, by no means yet universal, comeback. On this reading, the principles of Jastrow's book themselves, and thus the book also, went into eclipse. The desuetude was natural. Now that the eclipse is waning, the renewal that this printing proposes is also natural. (1981, 13; emphasis added) However, no such renewal of a scientific study of religion has taken place in American colleges and universities, nor has it burgeoned in many, if any, institutions of higher learning elsewhere around the world. This is not to deny that a resurgence of this science is logically possible, but it does make clear that this is a road not taken by American scholars of "religious studies" or many others elsewhere in the world. It cannot plausibly be denied that Jastrow's The Study of Religion has had no more influence on the field after its republication in 1981 than when it first appeared. In fact, I have shown in my An Argument in Defence of a Strictly Scientific Study of Religion (2021) that the IAHR, the very institution created to support the scientific study of religion in our universities, championed by the Paris historians and praised by Jastrow, is itself currently having to stave off yet another attempt by "traditional students of religion" to transform it into an omnibus organization open once again to take up the existential issues that undermined Jastrow's hope for the field in America. Just a little more than a decade ago, Luther H. Martin and I provided historical and cognitive reasons why "religious studies" as a scientific discipline was unlikely to be a road to institutional success for the field. Indeed, we referred to that notion as delusional, but we also made it clear that we were not denying "that many in the field have done valuable empirical work and are increasingly doing so …, only that it does not follow that 'religious studies' as a field has been productive, let alone theoretically sound; merely that it has not been entirely sterile" (Martin and Wiebe 2012, 595). Martin and I have debated for years whether, to extend the metaphor of "the road not taken," those who oversee our institutions of higher learning will ever, as Jastrow had hoped, formally recognize the discipline for the fully established science it has become? Will scholars of religion even demand such a recognition? Although Martin has denied it in our conversations, he does not foreclose that possibility altogether. In his essay "Is there a Future for a Scientific Study of Religion?" he writes: "Any promising future for a strictly scientific study of religion seems to lie … only with the initiative of a relatively small cadre of individual scholars, spread across an array of academic departments and programs whose research is pursued in the absence of institutional support or professional patronage" (Martin 2023, 405). I do not disagree with Martin's description of the present state of the field but, as I have argued in my recent The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion (2023), I believe the cumulative results of the scientific engagement with religions and religion by this cadre of independent scholar-scientists could come to influence "religious studies departments" to a considerably greater degree in the future. I am not sure their work will bring to fruition Jastrow's hope or their wishes for the field, but, in the words of the Poet* (slightly altered): "They took the road less traveled by/And that could make all the difference."**. *"The Road Not Taken" is a narrative poem by Robert Frost that first appeared in 1915 and was reprinted as the first poem in his Mountain Interval in 1916. **I wish to express my thanks to the editors of RSR for the nomination to contribute to the special issue of the journal to celebrate its fiftieth year in print, to Mark MacWilliams for his helpful comments in his letter of invitation and subsequent correspondence that enticed me to accept, and to Luther H. Martin, long-time colleague and friend for critical discussions about this project and his helpful feedback on the argument in the text and critical editing of the final draft.