Beyond the Reductionist Paradigm: Toward an Integrative Framework for Understanding Religion in Contemporary Religious Studies

Contemporary religious studies face a persistent methodological problem: whether religion can be adequately explained through a single causal framework or requires a multidimensional approach. This article critically reassesses the reductionist paradigm through a critical-hermeneutic, intellectual-historical, and comparative analysis of Comte, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. While acknowledging their analytical contributions, it argues that reduction becomes problematic when a partial explanation is treated as exhaustive. The study then draws on Eliade, Caillois, Fromm, and Todorov to recover dimensions marginalized by explanatory reductionism. It proposes an Integrative Framework organized around five interconnected dimensions: symbolic, existential, ethical, historical, and social. Operating through analytical differentiation, relational interpretation, and explanatory proportionality, the framework does not replace existing disciplinary approaches but coordinates their insights without granting any one explanatory priority. The article thus distinguishes analytical reduction from explanatory reductionism and advances methodological complementarity as a more adequate approach to the complexity of religious phenomena in context.