1
Ústav
religionistiky
Ninian Smart: Scientific Study of Religion in its Plurality,
in: Frank Whaling (ed.), Theory and Method in
Religious Studies. Contemporary Approaches to the
Study of Religion, Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin-New
York-London 1995, s. 177 - 191
FRVŠ 1890/2005
Téma: Interpretace náboženské skutečnosti
There has been since World War II, and in particular since the mid1960s, a great
flowering of the study of religion. There has been great growth in institutions offering courses in
religion in the English speaking world; while in Continental Europe and Scandinavia there has,
in the period since 1945, not only been a restoration to vigour of the faculties of theology, but also
a modest but significant advance in the history of religions, partly in the context of a widened
interest in non European cultures. At the same time, work in the social sciences has increasingly
converged, in matters related to religion, upon the work of comparative religionists.
But though we may live during a period when old-fashioned rationalism is declining, and
when the importance of the study of religion is more widely recognized, there is not always much
clarity in the assumptions brought to bear upon it. Or at least there is much divergence of aim
and method in the way in which it is approached.
This is partly because the subject is considerably shaped by the institutions in which it is
embedded. Thus the existence of faculties of Christian theology imposes certain categories upon
scholarship-for instance the division into such branches of enquiry as New Testament, patristics,
church history, systematic theology, philosophy of religion, comparative religion (or history of
religions). This builds into the subject already an asymmetry in the way in which Christianity is
treated as compared with other religious traditions. This of course reflects the history of
scholarship and the fact that classically the study of religion has been tied for the most part to the
training of clergy and other specialists; and so the modern universities of Europe and America in
some degree inherit the cultural assumption that Christianity should have a privileged place in
the curriculum. Conversely, worry about such an arrangement sometimes leads to the exclusion of
theology from the secular university. It is not my task here to enter into the controversies
surrounding this matter: but rather to look to the way in which the history of the subject affects
approaches to it. Undoubtedly for many scholars there remains the assumption that their task is
to be understood in the light of Christian (or Jewish or other) truth: that is, in one way or another
commitment is relevant to study. We can in respect of all this point to a number of differing
models.
First, there is the full-fledged model of what may be called constructive traditionalism.
That is, there is the approach to the study of religion from the perspective of a given traditionmost
frequently Christianity, and in particular some variety of it (Lutheranism, Roman
Catholicism, etc.). Ultimately here the exploration of tests, the undertaking of a critical evaluation
of them, the processes of hermeneutics, the systematic exploration of doctrines and so on are
geared to the constructive presentation of the tradition as expressing spiritual and intellectual
truth. Ultimately the task is one of expressing rather than describing. Thus the work of such
figures as Barth, Kung, Bultmann, Kiisemann, Tillich, and John Robinson-to put together a
variegated selection of recent theological and Biblical scholars-is in the last analysis concerned
with working out Christian truth, rather than simply doing history or even debating on both sides
of the question (as might happen in the context of the philosophy .of religion).
Second, there may be an attitude of seeing the study of religion as primarily concerned
with issues in philosophical theology-that is, with the questions arising concerning the nature and
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existence of God (or of the Ultimate, to use a wider-reaching term) as perceived in the light of the
history of religion, etc. This orientation may be called pluralistic theology. The accent is primarily
on questions of truth in religion rather than on truths concerning religion.
Third, the theological tradition may be treated positivistically: that is the essential task of
the theologian is to explore and describe the history of the faith independently of truth judgments
about the content of faith. Still, it is naturally the case that such an approach has its agenda set by
some implicit evaluations-for instance, about the importance of particular periods and aspects of
Christian, or other, history. We may call this approach theological positivism. The fact of
positivism does not preclude such an approach from being critical, and making use of the various
tools of modern critical historiography.
It is clear that looked at from a planetary point of view there are questions arising about
such models of theology. For one thing, the very word 'theology' is a western one. What does one
use for Buddhism? Should we talk of the Buddhologian? Moreover, not all traditions are as
hospitable either to pluralism or to critical positivism as is the modern western tradition.
Nevertheless, historians of religion have opened up critical questions about the various traditions.
I do not wish to argue the point here, but it seems to me clear that every tradition will inevitably
have to come to terms with such scrutiny. It matters, of course, less in some faiths than others. For
instance, Buddhism is not quite so tightly wedded to history as is Christianity or Judaism, while
the facts of early Islam are less in doubt than those of these other religions. But naturally the
critical positivist questions necessarily raise issues of truth in the context of what we have dubbed
pluralistic theology and thus are liable to generate new approaches within the various forms of
constructive traditionalism. Thus neo-Hindu theologies (such as those of Vivekananda and
Radhakrishnan) can be seen as ways of coming to terms not merely with western culture but also
with modern methods of scholarship, concerning India's deep past.
The modern period has of course seen the opening up more richly than in the past of
contacts and conversations between religious traditions. The exchange of insights between faiths
has come to have the name of dialogue. It is true that dialogue could simply be a method of
exchanging information and so just be a tool of historical research: but more pregnantly it has
been a particular style of pluralistic theology, a kind of cooperative spiritual exploration of truth.
Because however it does differ in style and tradition it may be useful to have a different name for
it. I shall call it constructive dialogue.
But none of all this so far is what may be thought of as the scientific study of religion. It is quite
true that sometimes so-called scientific studies of religion (say in sociology) conceal value- or
truth- assumptions which are of an essentially theological or philosophical nature (e.g.,
projectionism makes certain assumptions about the truth of religious belief, typically). It is quite
true also that pluralistic theology, constructive traditionalism and so forth may in fact use
scientific methods in the course of their enquiries. Certainly, such great theologians as Karl Barth
made use of much plain historical material and critical method. But the main thrust of their
concerns was not descriptive and scientific but expressive, proclamatory, philosophical:
presenting a faith-stance or a worldview.
It may be thought that there is a 'science of God.' In a sense perhaps there is (and to that
sense I shall later come). But I think in a more obvious way the idea that there is a 'science of
God,' a kind of theological science, uses the term in a Pickwickian way. Belief in God is highly
debatable, only indirectly (at best) testable, a question of reaction and commitment, much bound
up with value questions. Since the alternative views of the Ultimate are so various, and even
include the view that there is no Ultimate, it would be rash to define a theological science by
postulating to start with a personal God. At best we might think about a 'science of the Ultimate.'
Now it is clear that some men claim to experience the Ultimate, and it would be wrong to neglect
such experience. But because of the vagaries and strangenesses of issues about interpretation it
would be better in the first instance to confine the use of the word 'scientific' to the relatively
neutral investigation of phenomena, including those comprised by religious experience. In brief,
then, I think it is reasonable to say that the various models I have listed above (constructive
traditionalism through to constructive dialogue) do not fall, essentially, within the purview of
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what may be called the scientific study of religion, though they may overlap with it.
Those overlaps actually are important. How can one really get the feel of a faith except by
mingling among its adherents? A religion is more than texts, and the past: it is living history. This
being so, a kind of dialogue with people is necessarily part of the fabric of enquiry into religion,
whether scientific or otherwise.
Again, the philosophical skills which are fashioned in the philosophy of religion are important in
the empirical investigation of religion. For one thing, descriptions have to be scrutinized for
assumptions. Often our categories corne not in utter nakedness but trailing clouds of theory,
often inappropriate theory. Again, philosophy is much bound up with questions of verification
and method. Moreover the whole enterprise of hermeneutical enquiry is one which requires
philosophical debate. So it is idle to think one can simply do the history of religions, or the
sociology of religion, or whatever, without in fact bumping up against philosophical and
conceptual problems.
Moreover, the processes of critical history concerning, for example, Christian origins,
vital in the task of constructive Christian theology, are relevant to other areas of religio-historical
enquiry.
In brief, there is an overlap between the value-laden models for the study of religion and the
relatively value-free scientific study of religion.
One has, however, to be clear about this notion of the relatively value free. It is sometimes
said that it is not possible (or even desirable) to be perfectly value-free, perfectly 'objective.' The
term 'objective' is an unfortunate one, because actually all science and all unravelling of the world
involves a kind of interplay, a struggle even, between the inquirers and that which they are
concerned to understand. Nature is mean about her secrets. The right questions have to be posed:
and she is a great slaughterer of theories. Objectivity is important only in two ways-one being that
by being relatively free of prejudice the inquirer may show imagination in developing new
questions to pose to nature; and secondly objectivity implies the acceptance of the possible death
of one's pet ideas. One should be adventurous and sagacious, but also stoical in defeat. When we
come to the human sciences, however, there is a difference of a profound kind: for it is no longer a
mute nature that addresses us, but living and communicative beings. Empathy becomes
important. And that means somehow adopting the American Indian proverb: 'Never judge a man
till you have walked a mile in his moccasins.' Or rather: 'Never describes a man until you have
walked a mile in his moccasins.' The term 'objectivity' is not usually taken to include much in the
way of feeling or empathy.
So though the scientific study of religion should be relatively value-free, it has got to enter
somehow into the world of values. This is part of what has come to be called the
phenomenological method, as practised by for instance Kristensen and van der Leeuw.
However, it happens that partly because of its particular philosophical origins in the tradition
of Husserl, phenomenology of religion has also come to be bound up greatly with the search
for essences: that is, with describing types of religious phenomena, and classifying them. This
is to be seen in Religion in Essence and Manifestation and in Widengren's phenomenological work,
and represents part of the whole enterprise known as the comparative study of religion. It is
thus probably useful for the sake of clarity to distinguish between what I have referred to
above as the phenomenological method, which involves 'entering in' to the thought world of
the believer, and typological phenomenology, which is an attempt to anatomize the forms of
religion in a comparative manner.
The use of the term 'phenomenology' implies, as it is usually employed, a suspension
of belief, a prescinding from the worldview which the investigator may happen to hold,
except in so far as he may think that the investigation of religious phenomena is important,
which may imply something about a world view , though at a higher logical level. (It is in
general important to pay attention to levels: thus to say that we should use empathy to enter
into people's various positions is a position about positions, i.e., it belongs to a higher level.)
This sometimes obscures the fact that structures are important as well as empathy. That is,
since the believer views his activity against the background, (or should we say from within
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the background?), of a whole web of beliefs and resonances, the person who wishes to
understand the meaning of his action needs to unravel that structure or web. For instance,
what are we to make of the Buddhist laying a flower before the statue of a Buddha in Sri
Lanka? To understand her it is necessary to understand her understanding of the world, and
that constitutes quite a complex structure. So empathy has to be more than imaginative
feeling: it has to include a delineation of structures. So there is a certain tension between the
phenomenological method or structured empathy, and typological phenomenology, which
tends to try to cut through the organic particularities of a given cultural milieu.
This tension is something which runs deeply through the territory of the history of
religions. For while some of the scholars in the field are more concerned with the
comparative study of religion (a phrase which comes in and out of vogue-out of vogue in so
far as comparisons could be thought to be odious, and redolent of whiffs of western
imperialism and Christian superiority, the phrase falls on evil days; yet in vogue in so far as
we wish the study of religions to make use of the opportunities for comparison and contrast,
opportunities which are useful in testing various hypotheses about religion)-others again are
concerned more with the history of a given tradition or culture. Thus the study of religion
contains among other things the histories of various traditions, which mayor may not be at
one time or another in mutual historical interaction; but it also contains attempts at
comparative treatment, which is necessarily cross-cultural. It is at different times important
to stress uniquenesses of historical development and similarities of phenomena and elements
in differing cultures. The danger of separate histories is that each may fail to see certain
aspects of the dynamics of religion which can be gleaned from cross-cultural comparison. The
danger of the comparative study of religion is that it may crassly bulldoze the particularities
of the traditions.
Basically the comparative study of religion as it is practised tends to comprise first an
attempt at a world history of religions; and second various kinds of typological
phenomenology (for instance the comparative study of mysticism, sacrifice, worship and so
on). To complicate matters, it has become usual to substitute the phrase history of religions
for the comparative study of religion. Sometimes, as in the work of Eliade, such history of
religions includes a special scheme of typological phenomenology. Actually Eliade's scheme
has been remarkably fruitful, especially in raising issues about the religious and human
meaning of space and time. But in addition Eliade's work, like Otto's and Wach'sto name two
important forerunners-includes a general theory of existence: a kind of philosophy, one
might say, compounded out of various sources including Eliade's own historical experience.
Thus his typological phenomenology, especially in regard to views of history, is in part
determined by a kind of philosophical theology. This does not mean that we have to discard
the typology, but it does mean that we have to be aware, critically, of assumptions open to
question and lying behind the more empirical presentations of the data. It would perhaps be
ironic if having escaped from theological dogmatism as inappropriate for the scientific study
of religion we met it in new and more heavily disguised form in a philosophy of existence
unquestioned behind the shamanism. The point is that the science of religion should welcome
imaginative ways of looking at the data, including Eliadean ones, Marxist ones and so on; but
that is not to say that what counts as the scientific study of religion should be determined and
defined by anyone theory. For each theory should be testable in relation to the data in the
field. Assuming anyone theory to define the field destroys its true testability and gives it a
spurious authority.
Because of the institutional evolution of the subject the comparative study of religion has not
always existed in close relationship to such scientific or social-scientific disciplines as the
sociology of religion, anthropology of religion and psychology of religion. True, in the late
nineteenth century especially the influence of anthropology was very considerable, partly
because it was fashionable to speculate about the origins and evolution of religion and
'primitive' cultures were thought of also as somehow primeval and so containing clues to the
earliest phases of human culture and spirituality. Actually there seems no intrinsic reason
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why the history of religions and the sociology and anthropology of religion should not be
treated as a single investigatory enterprise. The divergences are somewhat fortuitous. Thus
the difference between sociology and anthropology represents a crude division between largeand
small-scale societies, a difference of style of founding fathers and gurus, and a certain
distinctness of methodological emphasis. But as for the scale question, this is hardly in the
last resort relevant to overall theorizing about society; as to the styles, well, they add up to
differing and often competing theories which have to be tested in the same empirical
marketplace; and as for methods, differences are to do with feasibilities-cancer research may
employ different techniques from research into the brain, but we do not thus artificially
divide human functioning. Further, though obviously the concern of the social scientists is
primarily with social relationships and dynamics, this is after all a major aspect of a religion
and its cultural expression and milieu, so that there is in principle no absolute divide between
history of religions and the social sciences of religion.
Similarly one may see history of religions as somewhat like economic history: the
latter is history with the accent on economic aspects of existence, and the former is history
with the accent on religious aspects of existence. It would be as artificial to deal with the
economic history of 1979 without mentioning Khomeini as it would be to treat of the religious
history of the Amish without dealing with the economics of small-scale agriculture.
It may be noted also that some of the. major figures in the sociology of religion have also been
concerned with typology. To take two examples:
Weber and his theories of the relationship between religious and socioeconomic
development; and Bryan Wilson and his attempt to classify various sects and new religious
movements. This work is relevant to the often neglected point that one can have a typology of
historical changes-e.g., what happens in cases of culture contact.
Though one might consider, reasonably, that the difference between the various
disciplines (history, sociology, anthropology of religion) is somewhat artificial, it does create
one advantage, in that the institutionalization of differing approaches leads to effective
intellectual lobbies against the neglect of certain areas. Thus it is easy to do the history of
religions in a rather textual and 'unliving' way. The social scientists pressure us to restore
balance here. A result is the renewed modern interest in the sociology of early Christianity,
the attempt to look at Buddhism from the perspective of modern Asian societies, the need to
analyse rites of passage in context and so on. The same can be said about some recent and
rather adventitious developments. Thus in North America especially the advent of women's
political activism has resulted in a burgeoning of women's studies and with that a renewed
interest in the female in religion; likewise recent concerns about Blacks, Chicanos, and Native
Americans have led to something of a revival in the study of the religions of these people.
One major methodological issue arises especially in regard to the sociology of religion, and in
a differing form regarding the psychology of religion. The tendency in these fields is for
theories to be developed which are in general projectionist. Thus God and the Ultimate and
the lesser entities and symbols of religious belief tend to be seen as unconscious or social
projections, which then act reflexively upon society and individuals. 'Thus a highly
sophisticated modern form of projection theory is to be found in Peter Berger's The Sacred
Canopy (British title: The Social Reality of Religion), in which he claims to espouse 'methodological
atheism.' It is taken as axiomatic that a scientific approach to religion cannot
accept the existence of God. But the non-acceptance of the existence of God is not equivalent
to the acceptance of the nonexistence of God. What should be used in approaching religion is
not so much the principle of methodological atheism as the principle of methodological
agnosticism. It is not useful for the investigator of religion to begin by imposing assumptions
drawn from his own worldview upon the subject matter. Thus the suspension of belief here
required is a kind of higher-order agnosticism. Thus God or the Ultimate need neither be
affirmed nor denied, but seen as something present in human experience and belief,
wherever it is so present. It is only in this sense that there is a 'science of God.' It is important
that the power of religious experience and belief and the way God serves as a focus of human
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activity and feeling should be recognized as factors in history and society and in individual
psychology. Often the power of the Ultimate-as-experienced is underestimated by modern
rationalist historians and social scientists. How important it is not a question of validity of
experience, but a matter of empirical impact. Conversely it may be that on occasions
religionists have overestimated the actual impact of the Ultimate-as-experienced. So though
there is not a science of God there is a sort of science of God-as-experienced. This is the
advantage of speaking of religion as a phenomenon.
Since impacts are in principle measurable it is not surprising that much attention has
been paid by some social scientists to statistical data: we can see one manifestation of this
approach in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. One of the problems arises from the
way in which a suitable wedding between this and more impressionistic but empathetic
phenomenology can be achieved. We see a like chasm in the psychology of religion between
much of the interesting work being done in typological phenomenology, e.g., over the
classification of mysticism and other forms of religious experience, and the measurement of
attitudes, etc., which occupies much of psychology-oriented psychology of religion. Frits
Staal's sketch on how to deal with mysticism in his Exploring Mysticism goes some way
towards achieving a synthesis; but there remain important philosophical problems not fully
resolved either by him or by others in regard to the ways to classify inner experiences-an
issue much bound up with the important, but vexed, question of the relationship between
experience and interpretation. Considerable conceptual problems enter into this discussion,
which has recently been carried on in the context of philosophical analysis. Lack of concern
with the problem has vitiated some influential works on religious experience, e.g.; by Stace
and Zaehner.
For various reasons, the interplay between anthropology, depth psychology and
history of religions has proved fruitful in the variety of ways myth and symbolism can be
approached. There are certain congruencies between structuralism, Eliade, and Jung, which
suggest that the analysis of religion may be a vital ingredient in any theory of human
psychology. And this in turn raises an important question as to what the comparative and
phenomenological study of religion ultimately aims at. Though it may be methodologically
unsound to try to define the study of religion in terms of some theory within the field, and the
data should be so far as possible presented in a way which is not theory-laden-for this would
lead too easily and cheaply to 'confirmation' of the theory by the data, yet it may remain
important for the history of religions to supply material which can be used theoretically.
Thus the following are important, though difficult areas for speculation and research: Are
there in fact archetypal symbols which are liable to appear independently in different
cultures? If so, what kind of explanation of this would be in order? What kinds of patterns
can be found in the processes of syncretism and the creation of new religious movements in
the third world (as the many thousand in Africa) and in parts of the western world? If the
mythic mode of expressing existential relationships to the cosmos and to society has been
widespread among peoples in the past and to some extent in the present, what other changes
are liable to accompany the erosion of this style of thinking? To what extent do non-religious
ideologies function in similar ways to traditional religious belief-systems? Can any form of
projection theory be empirically confirmed? Most importantly, the confluence of
anthropological and religio-historical approaches may be vital in giving us a better modern
understanding of human symbolic behaviour.
Curiously, though religions obviously have a vital interest in the arts and music, there has
been relative neglect of the visual, musical, and literary dimensions of religious consciousness.
This is perhaps in part due to the kind of training typical of western scholars-concerned often
with texts as evidences, and fascinated often by doctrinal and intellectual aspects of faith. An
interesting methodological question arises in regard to literature, in that novelists especially are
devoted to a kind of fictional 'structured empathy' such as 1 described earlier. They bring out the
feel of what it is like to be a given person looking at the world and at others in a certain way
(consider, for instance the divergent expressions of attitude delineated by Dostoyevsky in the case
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of the brothers Karamazov). To what degree would new forms of literary presentation be
relevant to the task of phenomenology? One thinks here of the novels of Eliade and Sartre as
cases where more abstract analyses are clothed in particular flesh.
One can discover, in the evolution of the study of religion, a series of stages. One stage is
represented by the discovery and decipherment of other cultures (I look here at the matter
inevitably from the standpoint of the western culture which gave rise to the modern study of
religion). This process is still going on. There are still large numbers of important texts not yet
edited and understood, and the recording of oral traditions is still only very partial. Access to the
records of differing religious traditions made possible the process of comparison. Classificatory
comparisons form ideally the second stage in the study of religion as a hu~an phenomenon. The
third stage is where theories whether sociological (e.g., Weber), anthropological (e.g., Tylor) or
psychological (e.g., Jung) can be formulated. We remain at a rather early stage in the
development of theorizing about religion. Perhaps also we are at the beginning of a harvest, in
which the many fruits of the extensive expansion of research since World War II can be gathered,
and when the history of religions and in a more general way the study of religion-may enter a
period of greater influence, in the broader world of learning.
So far we have looked at the scientific study of religion as being plural in scope, for it
concerns the many traditions and the plethora of forms of religion to be discovered on the planet
and in history; and as being multidisciplinary-for it must include not just the techniques and
processes of structured empathy and typological phenomenology, but also methods drawn from
history, sociology, anthropology, iconography, and so on. But there remain problems concerning
the boundaries of the field. Notoriously an agreed and useful definition of religion is hard or
impossible to find. Yet at the same time often scholars seem unnaturally confident as to what they
mean by the study of religion. It is a real question as to whether the subject should consider the
symbolic systems usually held in the West to lie beyond religion proper-e.g., nationalism, forms of
Marxism, and so on. There does seem an incongruity in treating the Taiping rebellion (or
revolution) in the category of the history of religions and Maoism in another quite separate
category of political history. After all, both movements were trying to resolve much the same
problem of China's national identity in a time of crisis, and they have many other properties in
common. It is interesting to note that in the account of one of the discussions at the History of
Religions Study Conference in Turku Finland (see Lauri Honko, editor, Science of Religion Studies
in Methodology, (1979: 30) the following passage occurs:
Similarly picking up van Baaren's remark, he-sc. Zwi Werblowsky-suggested (not facetiously) that
comparative religion ought also to look at the current process of formation of secular canons, e.g., the
works of Chairman Mao.
What is interesting is the disclaimer 'not facetiously.' For it is a result of perhaps an
ideological rather than a scientific divide that we put traditional religions in one basket and
secular ideologies in another. My own plenary paper, 'From the Tao to Mao,' at the Lancaster
Congress of the IAHR in 1975, was itself a protest against the rigid division between traditional
and modern secular worldviews. It is after all ultimately an empirical matter to discover if
theories worked out in regard to traditional religions also work in the case of their secular
counterparts.
Thus there is an argument for saying that the scientific study of religion is non-finite-that
is, there is no clear boundary which we can draw around it. It simply has to be discovered in
practice how far theorizing goes beyond the traditional faiths. Incidentally it is quite clear that
the methods of structured empathy are as necessary in the exploration of secular worldviews as
in the case of religions proper.
Though there is increasing reason to hold that the scientific study of religion should
be so far as possible value-free, save in so far as in the nature of the case it has to evoke
values, via the processes of empathy and phenomenology, there is little doubt that it has a
reflexive effect upon values. For one thing, the historical approach to scriptures is bound to
(and has) affected attitudes to their authority, and can nibble at their contents. Similarly
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knowledge of other religious traditions is bound to affect attitudes to one's own tradition.
Thus a lot of ink has been spilled on the question of the uniqueness of Christianity, since
from the perspective of certain theologies there is a motive to stress the difference between
Christianity and other faiths; while there is something of the opposite from the perspective
of modern Hinduism. The question of Christianity's likeness or unlikeness to other
traditions in this or that respect is strictly an empirical question (though it may remain a
debatable one). In this way empirical theses may have evaluative consequences.
The fact that the scientific study of religion can have such effects is one reason why it
takes a special kind of temperament to be devoted to its pursuit-a kind of passion for
evocative dispassion. It is, though, one of the noblest of human enterprises to try to enter
imaginatively into the feelings and thoughts of others. This is an ingredient in religious
methodology which has many lessons to teach in the modern world and the multicultural
ambience of the planet. This is one among a number of reasons why the study of religion
and religions should playa widening part in the educated person's understanding of the
world. Eliade is right to call for a creative role for the history of religions. Better, this role
should be played not just by the history of religions, but more widely by the whole set of
disciplines which in interplay make up the study of religion. All this is only perhaps a
second-order way of saying that religious sentiments, ideas, and institutions remain a
pervasive aspect of the human world. That so often the wider study of religion-what I have
called the scientific study of religion-has been suspected from the side of faith and neglected
from the side of reason has contributed to the lopsidedness of the human sciences.