1
Ústav
religionistiky
Frank Whaling: Introduction, in: Frank Whaling (ed.),
Theory and Method in Religious Studies. Contemporary
Approaches to the study of Religions, Mouton de Gruyter:
Berlin-New York 1995, s. 1 - 41
FRVŠ 1890/2005
Téma: Interpretace náboženské skutečnosti
In1984/85 Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion: The Humanities
and Contemporary Approaches to the Study oj Religion: The Social Sciences were
published in hardback. The combined price of the two books was high but they were wellreceived,
and eventually they sold out. Demand for them continued, and the decision has
been made to publish the main chapters from both books in a one-volume paperback
edition. It is this edition that you have before you now.
In selecting which chapters to include in this work, balance, length and merit have
been taken into account. For example my own original chapter on 'Comparative
Approaches to the Study of Religion' in the Humanities volume was reviewed as being a
creative piece of work, but its length of 132 pages made it too long for this shortened
edition. In the nature of things it also included material that was sometimes alluded to
elsewhere but treated it from another angle. Thus, while chapters such as this one have
been left out for reasons of space, the overall balance of the original two volumes has been
maintained. Moreover, the separation between the Humanities and the Social Sciences no
longer applies in the combined work, and approaches taken from the two areas are
brought together in a single paperback. Treatment is given to the psychological,
sociological, social and cultural anthropological, and historical and phenomenological
approaches to the study of religion; there are also chapters on the scientific study of
religion in its plurality, and the study of religion in a global context. An overall
consideration is therefore afforded to the main approaches and themes that are of weight
in the general study of religion.
This work was seen, and is still seen, as a sequel to Jacques Waardenburg's
Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion (1973). Indeed his book is also being
brought out later this year in a paperback edition. There is a sense in which his book
traces the early and classical period in the study of religion up to World War II. There is
a sense also in which we are coming to another watershed at the end of this millennium.
The fifty years from World War II until now can be seen as a second period in the study
of religion. By the year 2000 a third era will be dawning. As we read and ponder this page
now we look forward to the twenty-first century and what it will bring.
Later in this introduction I will consider reflectively some of the currents that are
developing out of the chapters that are already part of this book and which anticipate
future developments. However, the epoch dating from the Second World War to the end
of the century is a discrete period covered in principle within the covers of this work. And
we anticipate that in its cheaper and more accessible form this book will have an
important part to play not only in summarising and analysing what has gone before but
also in paving the way for what is to come. When supplemented by Jacques
Waardenburg's Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion it will give an overview of
the development of theories, approaches and methods within the modern study of
religion.
2
2. The Difference between the Classical and Contemporary Periods in the Study of
Religion: The General Background
What then are the contrasts between the classical and contemporary approaches to the
study of religion? These can conveniently be divided into two sections: the general
cultural background within which religion is studied, and the particular approaches to
the study of religion arising out of the general cultural background. World War II was a
watershed in both respects. What happened before it culturally and in the study of
religion received a jolt as a result of the trauma of World War II. Although there are
continuities be straddling the pre- and post-Second World War situations, the contrasts
are more marked. They are such as to make 1945 a significant symbolic date. What then
were the main factors in the aftermath of World War II that affected in a new way the
background in which the study of religion and the living of religion moved and had its
being?
(a) The first main factor was the disappearance of a number of European empires.
The passing of colonies and suzerainties of various kinds was a symbol of the passing of
western political dominance. A by-product was that Christian missionaries, who had been
helped by the fact of empire, were less able to go abroad and engage in proselytisation.
Leadership and mission passed into the hands of local Christians in Africa, India, China,
and so on. The centre of gravity of world Christianity began to move inexorably from the
West to the non-western parts of the world church. This had consequences for the study
of religion. Alongside this the coming to independence of former imperial territories often
signalled a renaissance in the religious traditions of those areas. Since 1945, due to a
number of factors, including the gaining of independence by various Muslim countries
and the economic influence of OPEC as well as more obviously religious causes, there has
been a striking renewal of self-confidence within the world of Islam that is of major
importance for the study and living of religion. The same is true of the renewal of the
Hindu tradition in India, the revival of the Buddhist tradition in South-East Asia, the
efflorescence of Japanese religious traditions and their study after the fall of the Shinto
state in 1945, and the emergence of a national and educational homeland for the Jews
after the setting up of the state of Israel in 1948.
(b) A second factor was the rapid spread of Marxism after World War II out of the
USSR into China, Cuba, Asian countries such as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia, and into areas of Africa and Europe. What had been a Russian preserve
seemed to become a universal possibility in spite of differences between Russia and China,
and Russia and Eastern Europe. Marxist studies of religions grew, and the notion of
Marxism, or Maoism in China, as 'secular religions' also emerged. The recent apparent
decline of Marxism has further consequences for the study of religion and of atheism by
scholars of religion and by Marxists.
(c) A third factor was the rise of new nation states in the aftermath of empire.
They were motivated by varied factors, one of which was nationalism. Without experience
of nationalism which had arisen as a European phenomenon, the new nations had to cope
with the pressures of independence in the light of their own culture. Nationalism and
religion often intermingled, or nationalism and Marxism often intermingled, in the
working out of independent nationhood. Religious traditions were often important in
promoting, sustaining, or even challenging the nation states that evolved. Nationalism
itself, like Marxism, often developed functional1y as a kind of 'secular religion' with its
own civil religion or capacity for evoking faith. Recently events in places like Bosnia,
Rwanda and Chechnya have revealed the latent power of ethnic nationalism-or rather
ethnic 'groupism'. Basic questions were raised for the study of religion: what is the
relationship between religion and society, between religion and nationalism; in what sense
3
should the study of religion include the study of 'secular religions' such as Marxism and
nationalism; is civil religion a meaningful concept, and if so in what way?
(d) A fourth factor was the application of models of economic development and
modernisation in most countries whereby services such as education, medicine, social
welfare, and economic affairs came more under the aegis of the state, whether the state
system was Marxist, capitalist, or mixed. According to some secularisation theorists, this
moving of control of religiously run matters into the hands of the state presaged the
decline of religion. This hinges however on whether religion is defined institutionally or
functional1y. Moreover it is to equate modernisation with a certain form of western
secularisation. Other states and cultures can modernise in their own way without
acquiescence in a rigid western model. Nevertheless there is little doubt that the process of
modernisation, however defined, has influenced religion itself and the study of religion.
The Shah of Iran's mistake was to modernise in too western a fashion. Nations and
cultures are coming to terms with the modern world in their own way. With the end of the
Cold War and the seeming superiority of the capitalist economic world-view, nations and
religious traditions are having to decide whether and in what way they wish to pursue the
capitalist path. Professor Huntington of Harvard has recently suggested that the next
substantial opponent of the West may be the Islamic world, partly because of its
opposition to the materialistic side of western capitalism. This theory begs a number of
questions but it is clear that the relationship between religion and economic development
and modernisation is an important matter in the study of religion.
(e) A fifth factor is the ongoing debate between the proponents of science and of
religion. At the pragmatic level the natural and allied sciences developed rapidly in the
post-war world due in part to the stimulus to scientific invention given by World War n.
The development of nuclear power, the human achievement in reaching the moon, the
technological revolution, the computer revolution and the revolution in genetics are
symbols of the roaring success of modern science as an instrument in changing the world.
The self-confidence of modern science in view of its pragmatic success, and its positivist
and empirical assumptions that scientific knowledge is proven knowledge of the world as
it is, seemed to have given scientific thought and achievement the edge over religious
thought and achievement. However, since about 1975 there has been a growing awareness
of the problems engendered by science through the escalation of nuclear weapons, the
growth of world population, the ecological crisis, and growing extremes of wealth and
poverty. Philosophers of science have questioned the simplistic scientism of former days;
there has been the soul-searching agonising among eminent scientists of the calibre of
Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and Polanyi; and there has been a dawning sense, enhanced
by the failure of secular scientific regimes to stamp out religion, that science has no
answer to the basic religious questions of meaning, awe, purpose, transcendence, value,
love and inwardness.
Discussions about the relationship between science and religion, such as whether
they are complementary or opposed, have spil1ed over into the study of religion. Is it a
'science', and if so what sort of a science is it? At one extreme scholars such as Huston
Smith (1992) would argue that we have moved into a post-modern situation wherein
scientific objectivity in the sense that what the western world has taken for granted is now
at an end. It is therefore futile for the study of religion to follow canons of scientific
objectivity that science itself is questioning. In any case scientific truth, such as it is,
operates at an inherently more superficial level than the truth of metaphysical religious
spirituality. At the other extreme scholars such as Segal and Wiebe would argue that
there is no irreducibly religious factor which justifies the study of religion as religion and
they would wish to reduce the study of religion to a facet of the social sciences or to a
series of area studies. In other words, for them religious studies is not a science; it is not a
discipline in its own right with its own subject matter and its own methods.
4
We will come back to these matters. However it is clear that the engagement between
science and religion is an important backdrop to a consideration of the study of religion.
Is science in some sense a 'secular religion'; is religion a 'science'; how do they relate; and
how do the study of religion and the study of science fit together in the totality of
knowledge?
(f) A sixth factor operating in the post-war situation is the acceleration of the
process of industrialisation. In many parts of the world there has been a shift of the
population from villages into towns or cities. Mao's China was a partial exception to this
but in general there has been the rapid growth of cities to cater for the demands of
industry. As people have moved into cities they have been faced with a change of work, a
change of environment, a change of life-style, and in effect a change of world-view. For
some this has been liberating. For others it was not, and the capacity to undergo a new
experience and to live through it creatively was sometimes provided by a religious
tradition or a new religious movement. For some primal societies the experience has been
very traumatic indeed. Increasingly, scholars of religion, and especially social scientists,
have become interested in the social and religious implications of rapid change. The
impulse so to become involved has arisen from the experience inherent in our modern
world of industrialisation and sudden change.
(g) A seventh factor was the accelerating domination of nature by human beings
that has come to light in the last 20 years. This has immediate consequences for primal
peoples in places such as Central Africa and the Amazon. We are coming to realise that
the long-term consequences of global warming, pollution, the using up of finite energy
resources, the puncturing of the ozone layer, the growth of world population, the rise of
deserts, the diminution of jungles, and the disappearance of natural species will have an
effect upon all human life as well as on the environment. A rapidly increasing interest in
the ecology of religion is to be welcomed and anticipated.
(h) An eighth factor was the increasing movement of people and information
around the world. Not only did persons move from villages to cities in their own land,
they also moved to different lands. Sometimes this movement was enforced as had been
the case with Jews in Nazi Germany or Poland· (where the pre-war population of four
million is down to a few thousand today). Elsewhere the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet
took the Tibetan Buddhist tradition into other lands, the migrations of Ugandan and
other African Asians brought Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs to the West, the Vietnam War
led to migrations from South-East Asia especially into the West, and the Palestinian
exodus has had increasing repercussions for Muslims, Jews and others in the Middle East
and beyond.
Voluntary migration has also been important. Religious movements have
accompanied the movement of various groups of people from the Indian sub-continent so
that, for example, there are nearly two million Muslims in Great Britain, which makes
them the second-largest religious group in the land. In addition to the movement of
various branches of religious traditions to other lands by migration there has also been
the steady conversion of others, including westerners, to those religions. There has also
been the spread of new religious movements into different parts of the world. The result is
that most religions are now world religions in the sense that there are small numbers of
believers in various parts of the world. And much more is known about different religious
traditions by people around the world.
All this movement and religious inter-change is exacerbated by the tremendous
growth in airline travel, television, computer services, international communications and
the possibility of almost immediate travel to or informing oneself about virtually any
group or tradition on the face of the earth. The impact of the growing movement of
people and information around the globe is considerable for both the practice and study
of religion.
5
(i) A ninth factor was the rise of new cultural/religious blocks around the world.
We assume that within these religious blocks nationalism and secular world-views were
present in differing degrees. One such block remained the modern West which was
however not as dominant as it had been before World War II. It included North America
and Europe and had offshoots in Australasia. In spite of the demise of Christendom, and
the minority presence of other religions in it, this block remained largely Christian, white
and democratic. Although some state churches still remain, the growing tendency, despite
the work of movements such as the Moral Majority, is towards effective separation of
church and state.
A second, now much depleted, block was the Marxist one with its former
heartlands in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Remaining only in places such as China,
Cuba, and North Korea, the Marxist tradition exercised state control over religion but
was unable to subdue it.
A third block centred upon Islam. Its original heartlands in North Africa and the Middle
East remained crucial and it had offshoots out to Malaysia and Indonesia and beyond.
Despite tensions between Shi'ite Islam centred upon Iran and Islam in Sunni areas, and
between liberal and more fundamentalist strains of Islam, this period has seen a remarkable
renewal of confidence within the Islamic world, which has led Huntington to suggest
that it has replaced Marxism as a threat to the West.
A fourth block centred upon the Hindu tradition in India. Although India became
a secular state in 1948, although offshoots of the Hindu tradition have sprung up in new
areas of the world, and although the Hindu caste system is now outside the civil law of
India, the heart of that tradition remains in India and has its own ethos.
A fifth area of importance (perhaps too minute to be called a block) is Israe~ as the
homeland of contemporary Judaism. Although Jews reside in other parts of the world,
notably in the United States, the new nation of Israel represents the emotional heartland
of the Jews and of the Jewish tradition.
A sixth block centres upon the Buddhist heartlands of South-East Asia.
Although the Buddhist tradition has undergone traumatic experiences in the Marxist area
in and around China, in the exciting religious melange of the new Japan and South
Korea, and in the Theravada nations of Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand, it remains an
important influence in the area whether it has political power or not.
A seventh potential block is the Far Eastern Confucian complex covering China, Japan
and the 'four dragons' of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. Although
diverging politically they are moving along a similar economic journey and they share
culturally the three ways of the Taoist, Mahayana Buddhist and Confucian traditions.
The rise of contemporary New Confucianism is especially significant, centred as it is upon
the work of thinkers such as Wei-Ming Tu who has been asked to advise countries such as
Singapore on Confucian educational values and who brings a faith perspective to bear in
his Confucian thought.
A final and more amorphous block covers a swathe of societies in the southern
hemisphere, including Black Africa, Latin America and the Pacific peoples of Polynesia
and Melanesia. They have a background in primal religion but have assimilated some of
their primal religious expressions into independent churches and other Christian forms.
Such a picture contrasts strikingly with the picture at the beginning of the century
when the classical approaches to the study of religion were emerging. Europe had still
been the fulcrum of world civilisation: a Christian continent, the purveyor of empire and
mission, ruled by monarchs and class values, and intellectually supreme. During this
century Christian Europe has fomented two world wars, its empires and missions have diminished
or gone, its monarchs and class values have been transformed or replaced, the
notion of Christendom has gone for ever, and the very concept of Europe-as it has split
into East and West and then ended the split-is under intense debate. Needless to say, the
6
new and developing situation has deeply influenced the study of religion since World War
II.
A tenth factor is the emergence since 1970 of a sense of living in a global world.
This sense arose partly as a result of the cumulative effect of the nine factors mentioned
above. There have been changes in the human condition since the dawn of human history
but in the post-World War II period there has developed a rising curve of ever-increasing
change that has swept us into a new global situation. The fact of change is a constant in
human affairs. It is the breadth, depth, variety and all-encompassing nature of
contemporary change that makes our age so different and that has made us aware as
never before that we are living in a new
global age.
Since the original Club of Rome study of 1972 the global threat and opportunity
has been analysed at three levels. The first level, alluded to in The Limits of Growth
(1974), was that of potential ecological crisis wherein the fate of the earth would be linked
to the fate of the people living on the earth. At the humane and social level there was the
increasing poverty gap between rich and poor nations, the rapid growth of world
population, anxiety about whether food could always be provided for this increasing
population, concern about racial and sexual discrimination, political tension between East
and West, and economic tension between North and South. At the moral and spiritual
level there was a concern for the future development of space and the sea which belong in
principle to the human race, a concern about the global use of electronics and genetics
which affect everyone, a sense that the perennial search for meaning and wholeness was
the spiritual birthright of humankind, and a sense that there needed to be peace among
the religions in order for global peace to be made possible. ]n short, there was a sense in
which the nations, peoples and religions of the world were in it together in a way that had
never been true before; there was a need for global dialogue in which religions would
have an important part to play; and although the global threat was real, so were the
global resources at the natural, human and spiritual levels.
The conceptual and practical consequences of globalism for the study of religion
have been working themselves out for the last 20 years, alongside the seemingly opposite
thrusts in the direction of regional religious
blocks and local ethnic nationalisms.
I t is clear from analysing the above ten factors in their cumulative effect that we
live in a different world from that of pre-1945· The study of religion since 1945 has
changed in radical ways and stands in contrast with the study of religion before 1945. We
turn now to investigate how it has changed in the post-World War n period and what its
contemporary themes are. We could only do that after looking at the wider changes in
culture and religion which form the background for the changing story of religion.
3. The Difference between the Classical and Contemporary Periods in the Study of
Religion: The Detail
(a) Waardenburg, in his Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, gives a
succinct account of the development of the study of religion from the time of Max Muller
to about 1945, and then he includes an anthology of extracts on theory and method from
the work of over 40 scholars who were pioneers in the field of the study of religion. 1t was
possible to describe the classical period in this way because specialisation and
diversification were less 'rampant than they are today, scholarly disciplines and academic
knowledge generally were less developed, and the world itself was a less complex place.
Today, as we shall see, there is an extraordinary ramification within the study of religion,
a vast growth of academic knowledge of all kinds, a springing up of new set::ds within the
field, and a complexification and globalisation of the context within which religion is
7
studied that made easy generalisations, reliance upon a select anthology, and a one person
treatment difficult if not impossible. This book, therefore, is not an anthology and it is not
by one person. 1t is the work of a team who aim to summarise, insofar as they can in the
covers of one work, the contemporary approaches to the study of religion. This summary
is not a compilation of select passages of key authors (the bibliographies contain well over
a thousand entries); it does not attempt to impose a particular viewpoint (the authors
were born in different countries and work in different universities in three different
continents): it is a narrative of the main developments and discussions since World War n
in the fields of history and phenomenology of religion, sociology of religion, psychology of
religion, the scientific study of religion in its plurality, and the study of religion in a global
context.
However, although an account is given of a vast body of material gathered from varied
parts of this complex area of study-a more ambitious account than has been attempted
before-an endeavour is also made to give an overview of the whole field. Indeed it was
hoped that it would be possible so to summarise the mass of developments since 1945 that
an integral and acceptable way forward world be opened up for the whole study of
religion. Such a grandiose aim has not been fully realised. Nevertheless, in the course of
this work, a number of suggestions. are made as to how, on the basis of past research and
present directions, future programmes may proceed. And at the end of this Introduction I
hope to present an implicit way forward arising out of what is mentioned in this work.
Before we focus more fully on the differences between the contemporary period and the
classical period dealt with by Waardenburg, there are three brief points that need to be
made. Firstly there is some continuity between this volume and that of Waardenburg.
There are no rigid breaks in the web of history and even a dramatic date such as 1945
must be to some extent arbitrary. Nevertheless periodisations, however arbitrary, are
useful, and in the case of this book the basic cut-off point is 1945 and the limits set by
Waardenburg's work.
Our second point is that, like Waardenburg, we do not aim to cover all aspects of the
study of religion. Our purpose is not to summarise the content of the various religious
traditions of the world. This is done with reasonable accuracy by bibliographical
reference volumes such as Charles Adams' A Reader's Guide to the Great Religions
(1977) and Mircea Eliade's Enryclopaedia 0/ Religion (1987) as well as specialised
encyclopaedic volumes in different disciplines and fields of study. In this book there will
be some reference to content, for method and content never can (or should) be fully
separated, but our main concern is for methods and theory rather than for content per se.
We will deal with contemporary approaches to the study of religion rather than with the
contemporary content of the study of religion which is generally taken as read.
Our third point is that, insofar as this work is written in English, the references
and quotations from books in other languages are mostly given in English, and reference
to the original works is made elsewhere, usually in the bibliographies at the end of the
chapters. This does not detract from the international coverage. As we have stated before,
this book is written by an authentically international team and our only regret is that it
has not been possible to include a non-western member in the team.
(b) Increasing Diversification in Contemporary Approaches. Before· 1 945 the
study of religion was mainly concentrated around a relatively small number of scholars in
the great universities of Europe. Only a few posts were available and a coterie of scholars
was working in the field. The scene was dominated by the history of religions and
comparative religion. Studies were focussed on texts, on the religions of classical
antiquity, and on what were then called 'primitive religions'. European philosophical and
theological assumptions underlay a good deal of work in the study of religion. It operated
within a particular culture looking beyond its geographical and spiritual boundaries in a
somewhat condescending way.
8
Today things are vastly different. At the Mexico Congress of the International
Association for the History of Religions that will meet in the summer of 1995 around 5000
people will come together from many parts of the world and from many religious
traditions (or from none). The history of religions, comparative religion, textual studies,
the religions of classical antiquity, primal religions, and the philosophy and theology of
religion will form a small part of their enquiry. As well as general sections the congress
will include more specialised sections on a plethora of topics ranging from women in
religion to Mithraism, from the major religions to new religious movements, from religion
in Africa to religion in other geographical areas, and from the phenomenology of religion
to the psychology of religion. It will mirror the complexity within the study of religion at
this juncture.
For we live at a time of increasing diversification. Not only has the mass of
accumulated religious data multiplied, so has the variety of methodological reflection
upon those data. It is not merely the case that the number of methodological approaches
with a serious interest in religious data has increased, there has also been an
intensification of discussion about religion in each approach. Growing specialisation
within each approach has resulted in a growing ramification of discussions about religion
and, in addition to this, new 'seeds' have sprung up ranging from the ecology of religion
to the academic dialogue of religions. The pity of it is that some of this discussion is
virtually unknown. The temptation is for scholars of one nationality or language group to
know only each other's work, or for scholars of one discipline to be acquainted solely with
the research in their own area. This book is an attempt to gather together and to put into
some sort of order the diverse discussions about method and theory since 1945. At the
same time it is an attempt to overcome the fragmentation that is inevitably occurring in
the field.
Within each chapter certain basic questions are addressed, either implicitly or
explicitly, to focus the discussion. In each approach the basic method is described, and
questions are raised as to what the method is attempting to do in the study of religion,
whether it is complementary to other methods, and whether it is centred inside or outside
the basic study of religion. The basic position implied within the approach concerned is
also investigated: Is it one of neutrality or are truth claims implied? And if so, are those
truth claims related to a particular discipline, to religion in general, or to a particular
religion? The question of definition is also raised: What definition, if any, is implied in the
approach concerned? A further area of interest relates to the scope and nature of the data
used in a particular approach: are they first or second hand; do they arise out of primal
religion, historical religions, or the major religions; are they concentrated upon the study
of one religion and if so which one? The main part of each section focuses upon a
description and discussion of the major trends within the area concerned. Attention is
also given to future prospects for the approach concerned.
Clearly the above concerns-method, standpoint, definition, nature of the data, and
future prospects-are interrelated. We will deal with some of the implications later in the
Introduction. We are content at the moment with pointing out the complex nature of the
discussion of theory and method within each of the above-mentioned approaches, and
with outlining the criteria whereby we have sought to bring order to each section and
integration to the whole.
It is our hope that scholars with particular interests in history and phenomenology
of religion, anthropology of religion, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, the
scientific study of religion in its plurality, and the global context of the study of religion
will, after they have read the chapter on their own area, read the other chapters so that
they can obtain an overview of the wider discussion. Although our work is significant in
that it brings together and orders a vast amount of material within each approach, its
more important function is to summarise the general field of method and theory in the
9
study of religion in a way that has never been so fully attempted before. There is an
urgent need for scholars of religion to supplement their areas of specialisation to gain a
total view of the field as a whole, and a major aim of this book is to contribute to this end.
(c) Greater Research Involvement if Social and Humane Sciences. Another major
difference between the classical and contemporary approaches to the study of religion is
the increasingly complex relationship. between the humane and social sciences and this
sphere of research. Durkheim, Weber, Freud, Jung, and James may have departed from
the scene, but it is possible to submit that, in the contemporary situation, any theory or
method of investigation in any of the humane or social sciences is or may be applied to the
study of specific sets of religious data.
In the overall planning of this volume, a balance has been struck between the
chapters related to the social sciences that concentrate upon the methodological findings
of particular disciplines, and the chapters related more implicitly to the humanities where
the treatment is geared as much to themes as to disciplines. It is our hope that this way of
dealing with the material illustrates the sheer variety of contemporary approaches, the
complexity of treatment within and between different approaches, and a balance between
the minutiae of detail and wider connecting themes.
(d) Importance if Improved Communications for the Sturfy if Religion. Another
factor that played a minor role in the period of classical approaches but is more
important in contemporary studies is the fact of quicker communication. A new prophet
arising in Africa, a new religious movement arising in some part of the West, a new
indigenous expression of religion in the developing world can now be investigated on the
spot by anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, or historians taking a plane out of
Kennedy or Heathrow or going by train or car to the area concerned. The present-day
scholar has access not only to books written by travellers or scholars but also to taperecordings,
f1lms and so on, which record in sight and sound the formerly barely
accessible data of various religious groups ranging from nomads to peasants to
syncretistic sects. The rapid development of the technical and other devices of the
communications media has made religious data available in a way undreamt of by
scholars before World War II. It is causing the flavour of the study of religion to change.
These communication issues have a subtle influence upon three questions referred
to in this volume. In the first place there is a discernible shift of attention in the study of
religion away from an obvious involvement in the history of past religions to a greater
interest in" present developments. Thus the focus of all the chapters in this book,
although not neglectful of the past, is geared more obviously to present religious developments
than would have been the case before 1945· Secondly, the social scientific
approaches, for example the chapter by David Wulff, bring out the increasing use of
quantificatory data in religious research. The balanced presentation of Wulff and his
colleagues masks the extent to which statistics and quantificatory data are becoming
dominant in some of the social scientific investigations of religion. This leads us to our
third point. Insofar as the silicon chip is already affecting scholarship, and computers
have become part of the apparatus for research, there is the need for reflection upon the
consequences of this trend for the study of religion. What kind of data can computers
store? According to what criteria should the ordering of these data be organised? Is
computer information exhaustive of, or complementary to, other kinds of information?
(e) Implications of the Western Nature of much Religious Research. A further
factor that is assuming more importance within the contemporary study of religion in
contrast with the situation that pertained at the time of the classical approaches is an
increasing concern for the implications of the fact of the western nature of much past
research. This book traces in detail the contributions of scholars of different western
nationalities to different approaches-and this in itself is salutary because past surveys
have tended to proceed along national lines-and yet the wider question that is emerging is
10
whether the study of religion has not been too dominated by western categories. Although
the balance is partly redressed by the highlighting of the work of Mbiti, Radhakrishnan,
Coomaraswamy, Buber, S. I-I. Nasr, Wing-tsit Chan, and D. T. Suzuki, the point still
rematos.
What is the significance of the fact that religions outside the West have been
studied in a western way and, to a lesser extent, that religions outside Christianity have
been studied in a Christian-centred way? To what extent has this pre-1945 attitude of
often unconscious superiority been superseded in the contemporary situation? To what
extent have western scholars of religion subsumed the whole spiritual creation of
humankind under one interpretation of religion and then absolutised it? To what degree,
in spite of the concern for epoche and Einfühlung fostered by the phenomenological
approach, do western scholars feel that it is they who must research and interpret the
religion of others for others? Can and should scholars from other cultures study western
religions in the West; can and should western and non-western scholars study western
and non-western texts together; can and should western anthropologists interpolate the
views of the persons in primal tribes into their academic investigations?
It is clear that scholars from independent countries take a deep interest in their
own religious and cultural traditions. This may well lead to a rediscovery in terms of their
own culture of their own religious heritage, and also to scholarly selections and
evaluations which can be explained by reference to the present-day spiritual,
psychological and social needs of the traditions concerned. One has only to analyse the
work of a phalanx of African scholars from John Mbiti to Kwame Bediako to realise the
truth of this. An approach by western scholars based upon dialogue, cooperation, and
willingness to learn would appear to be more in order than dialectical tension in defence
of western methodologies. It is perhaps no accident that one of the most persuasive
exponents of the academic dialogical method, Raimundo Panikkar, was born of an Indian
Hindu father and a Spanish Christian mother. Or, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith puts it, 'the
truth of all of us is part of the truth of each of us' (Smith 1981: 79)'
(f) Creater Involvement of SeCt/lar Religions and Inter-religious Dialogue. Related
to the last point, a further factor differentiating the contemporary from the classical
period is a greater awareness of the involvement of what may loosely be called secular
religions and inter-faith dialogue in the contemporary study of religion. Firstly, there
have been forthcoming more Marxist studies of religion in relation to ethnographic
studies, studies of Africa and Asia, the theory of scientific socialism and dialectical
materialism, discussions of institutionalised religion, and searchings for the roots of
religion in terms of social conflict, escape, or projection. It will be interesting to see what
happens to Marxist studies of religion in the new dispensation that appears to be arising,
wherein, as. the Chinese would put it, the Mandate of I-leaven seems to be slipping away
from institutional Marxism; Will this lead to a renewal of theoretical Marxism as seems to
be the case with the New Confucian tradition after its institutional demise in China?
Secondly, there has arisen an amount of research into and discussion about the
role of secular religions in the study of religion. These include Marxism, secular
humanism, nationalism, and also civil religion. Smart's researches (198 I) into the
'religious' force and role of nationalism, and Bellah's researches (1975) into the force and
role of civil religion have been important landmarks in this area of study. From a
functional point of-view secular religions have the functional power to evoke faith. In
practice they usually lie alongside more formal religions as partners, as opponents, or as
enthusiastic helpmates.
Thirdly, there has been the rise of inter-faith dialogue and understanding,
especially between Christianity and other religious traditions. This dialogue has had an
impact upon the interpretation of present-day religious expressions, and in the light of it
encounters of religious attitude and systems are seen to be basically peaceful and
11
constructive. In very recent times the centenary in 1993 of the 1893 Chicago World
Parliament of Religions has given a stimulus to inter-faith dialogue and to academic
discussion concerning its role in the study of religion. In practical terms the discussions
about the feasibility of setting up an ongoing parliament of world religions involves a
number of scholars of religion from different religious traditions as well as religious
leaders .
In some quarters the term 'ideology' has been loosely used about both Marxism
and the secular religions and about inter-faith dialogue, on the grounds that neither the
secular religions nor inter-faith dialogue are impartial, albeit from opposite directions.
The word 'ideology', with its emotive overtones, does not perhaps convey the correct
resonance to do justice to the contribution that is being made by Marxism and inter-faith
dialogue. This is especially the case as the notion is arising in other quarters that western
positivistic science can also operate as an 'ideology', and this leads us back to some of the
points made in our last section.
However, the question remains as to whether the study of religion is destined to
become an arena for competing 'ideologies', whether there is a bedrock and sub-stratum
of data and theories to which so-called 'ideologies' can contribute and which they can
amend constructively without producing a cacophony, or whether the study of religion
itself has an ideology-critical function. This range of issues is addressed in the chapters by
Ninian Smart and Frank Whaling.
(g) Truth-claim Phenomenology and Theology. Our next contrast relates to the
status of truth claims, phenomenology, and theology in regard to the study of religion,
and this debate, of course, goes back to the earlier part of the century although ,it has
intensified since 1945.
In the first place it is pointed out in various places that 'truth claims' are not necessarily
confined to phenomenology and theology and that much depends upon what we mean by
'truth-claims'-are they methodological or ontological, general or specific, 'first-order' or
'second-order'? It is clear that greater specificity as to the different levels and motivations
of truth is required. After all, any respectable discipline, method or approach would
hardly disclaim all concern for 'truth' of some kind. Different chapters allude to this
matter in their own way.
Secondly, much discussion in the post-World War II period has centred upon the
role of phenomenology of religion. Part of the reason for the growing interest in
phenomenology of religion in the earlier post-war period that followed on from the work
of Kristensen and van der Leeuw was the feeling that the component of 'religion' had
been under-emphasised in earlier times. Theology, by its implied value-judgements, had
undervalued the religions of others. By means of its concepts of epoche, putting one's
convictions into brackets in order to understand another person or tradition, and
Einfühlung, empathising with the other positively by 'walking in his or her moccasins for
a couple of miles' it was possible for phenomenology to avoid theological valuejudgements
and in some way to allow believers to see the universe through another's eyes.
As far as other disciplines were concerned, such as oriental literatures and
languages, history, sociology, psychology and anthropology, the question that was raised
by the phenomenologists of religion was twofold. Were these other disciplines, when they
studied religion, primarily interested in the study of religion or in the study of their own
discipline? And the second question was whether these other disciplines were able to
compare religions? The implied answer was no, and so the phenomenologists of religion
attempted to compare religious phenomena typologically through their principle of eidetic
vision; they attempted to give a greater integration to the study of religion; and they
emphasised that 'religion' was at the heart of the study of religion.
In recent times a sharp attack has been made upon the whole raison d'etre of
phenomenology of religion by Segal (1989) and Wiebe (1985, 1990). They call it
12
religionism and argue that religionists are committed to the defence of religion, that they
uphold the truth of religion against the natural sciences and philosophy, that they defend
the religiosity of religion against the social scientists, and that they safeguard the
irreducible religious analysis of the origin, function and meaning of religion. Segal and
Wiebe argue that scholars such as Eliade and Wilfred Cantwell Smith take with absolute
seriousness the believer's viewpoint, and that they also take seriously the believer's focus
of faith (as Smart [1973: 62] calls it), the holy (as Otto [1917] puts it), the sacred (as Eliade
[1959] puts it). This, it is argued, leads them into theology rather than phenomenology of
religion. In short, it is further argued, the need for phenomenology of religion is no longer
present because there is no irreducible religious factor that justifies the study of religion
as religion in separation from theology or the social sciences. It can therefore be collapsed
into theology on the one hand and the social sciences on the other hand. In effect this is a
form of reductionism. It is not on a par with the classical reductionist theories of
Durkheim, Freud and Marx but its effect is the same-to reduce religion to something else.
Although classical phenomenology of religion has undergone modification since
1945 in ways described in this book, its basic intuitions concerning the need for
suspension of judgement, empathy, and non-judgmental comparisons remain sound.
Segal and Wiebe misrepresent the intention of phenomenologists of religion, which is not
to get inside the conscious view of believers in a literal sense but to understand them in
such a way as not to give offence. Moreover, Smart's focus of faith, Eliade's sacred and
Smith's transcendent are not portrayed as ontological or essential realities. The
phenomenologist is concerned to understand the believer and his faith and retains
suspension of judgement in relation to the object of the believer's faith. Moreover, the
phenomenologist agrees that the believer's conscious belief is only part of the sum total of
his religiousness, not the whole of it. Furthermore, methodological arguments relating
basically to western and Christian matters cannot apply in a universal sense even if they
had worked in a western sense. Finally, phenomenology is ultimately a co-operative and
dialogical method rather than a dialectical one, as Segal and Wiebe would want to make
it. Nevertheless we can be grateful to them for enabling phenomenology of religion to
advance in response to the sharpness of their insights.
In the third place the perennial question remains of the relationship between the
study of religion and theology. The contributors to this book are in agreement that
theology as traditionally conceived is separate from the study of religion in the sense that,
although it provides data for such study, its categories do not and cannot dominate it.
They also agree that institutional considerations have tended to accentuate the differences
between the two educational domains. They agree too that insofar as theologyoperates
from within particular religious traditions and focusses upon the l1ature of transcendent
reality, its concerns are different from those of the study of religion.
At certain places in this volume some unease is expressed at the confrontational
attitudes sometimes implied between monolithic views of theology and the study of
religion. There are various views of what theology basically is and of what the study of
religion basically is, and the need is for flexibility and complementariness rather than
confrontation.
Unease is also expressed occasionally at the implied assumption that theology is to be
equated with Christian theology. The other religious traditions have their own theology
(or Buddhology or Ramology).
More far-reaching is the contemporary search for a global theology of religion.
Essayed in the work of scholars such as Hans Kung, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, John Hick,
Raimundo Panikkar and others it attempts to seek for universal theological categories
that arise out of and are applicable to all the religious traditions of the world. The starting
point for such a global theology of religion is not the theology of any particular tradition
but the global situation itself. By working back from the global crisis and opportunity to
13
the theological categories that can speak to global needs, there is the chance to transcend
normal theological differences hermeneutically for the sake of the human race on planet
earth under transcendence. There is a sense in which a global theology of religion may
well develop into a separate discipline which is relevant to the study of religion and to
particular theologies from its detached viewpoint. Durwood Foster's quest for what he
calls an ultimology would fit into this endeavour (Storey and Storey 1994: 155-163), as
would Masao Abe's notion of a positionless position 'in which the diversity and unity of
world religions can be fully and dynamically realised' (Storey and Storey 1994: 164).
(h) Difinitions of Religion. In the course of this book countless definitions of
religion are mentioned or assumed, and to summarise them here would be unnecessarily
to lengthen this introduction. Perhaps one of the reasons why western philosophy of
religion has found it difficult to grapple with the study of religion is because that study
has not been amenable to agreement on anyone definition of religion. Conversely one of
the probable reasons why the study of religion has not become even more important than
it is lies in the fact that it has not been content to settle upon an agreed set of given data
which would constitute it as a rigid discipline wherein a particular definition would be
universally applicable. Thus the question of definitions is necessarily part of our wider
discussion of methods and theories.
Our volume does not solve the question of definition although it does pose it, and it
does open up the various definitional alternatives in a more comprehensive way than is
usually the case.
However there is another sense in which this book performs a restricted and yet equally
valuable task in the sphere of definitions. Attention is paid in various places to the need
for a more exact definition of terms that are important in the study of religion. Thus,
more sophisticated views on terms such as myth, history, phenomenology, science,
hermeneutics, understanding, and interpretation are given throughout the work. Clarification
of terms and concepts within these more limited areas is important.
(i) Scope and Nature of the Data. Another difference between the classical period
of the study of religion and the contemporary situation lies in the contrast between the
scope and nature of the data considered worthy of study. In the classical period there was
relatively greater stress put upon the data of primal religion, archaic religion, the
religions of antiquity, and the classical forms of the major living religions.
Anthropologists such as Tylor and Frazer, sociologists such as Durkheim, and
psychologists such as Freud theorised on the basis of the data of primal religion. When
they ventured into comment upon the major religions, the likelihood was that their data
would be taken from their own Judaeo-Christian tradition.
At the present time, the situation is different. Not only has there been an explosion
of knowledge in regard to all the religious traditions of the earth, the greatest relative
accumulation of data has encompassed the major living religions. There are a number of
reasons why this is so and we will look at them briefly now.
(ia) One reason is the relatively less important position of anthropology in the
contemporary study of religion. During the classical period, the data of the primal
religions provided the jumping-off point for some of the early formative theories of
religion. With the exception of the work of Levi-Strauss, anthropology is now less
significant in theory-formation. (ib) Another reason lies in the change of emphasis within
sociology of religion. Durkheim's famous definition of religion (1976: 62.)
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that
is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single
moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them
was erected, in the main, on the basis of research into primal religion with its more static
flavour. Present-day sociology of religion has a greater interest in contemporary religion
and change.
14
(ic) A third reason lies in the rediscovery of religious traditions in a number of
recently independent nations. As we saw earlier, the focus of religious attention and study
inevitably falls upon the major religious traditions that are the basis of religious life in
those nations.
(id) Another reason lies in the increasing western interest in major non-western
religions. Non-academic factors have fostered this growth of interest: the immigration of
Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs into the West; the steady trickle of converts to
eastern religions; the effects in the USA of political events in Korea and Vietnam; the
aftermath of empire in Britain; the spread of eastern sects into the West; and the growing
importance of Islam. The effect of the above developments has been to focus more
attention upon the major religions in their contemporary as well as classical forms.
(ie) A further reason lies in the fact that the pre- 1945 situation of more static and
stabilised systems is no longer with us and religious change is the order of the day. New
religions are multiplying in Japan, numerous Indigenous African Churches are springing
up constantly, and new sects are sprouting in different parts of the West. The general
effect of the obvious presence of religious change around the world is to create a greater
interest in the contemporary religious scene and in the major living religions.
(if) A sixth reason lies in the concern for the present state of western
religion and culture among scholars of religion in both East and West. Whether that
concern be for the seeming weakness of Christianity in the West, for rampant materialism
in the West, for the help that eastern religions may be able to give to the West, or for the
possible dangers that eastern cultures face from the West, the inclination once again is to
focus upon the present context and the major religions. The past for its own sake is no
longer an end in itself.
(ig) A final reason lies in the growing interest since World War II in religious
education in schools, especially in Britain and the United States and increasingly in
Europe. The American constitution had banned the teaching of denominational or
dogmatic religion in state schools, but this ban did not apply to the non-evaluative
teaching of world religions or descriptive teaching about Christianity. Since 1945 such
teaching has advanced· in American schools. In Britain the pre-I945 stress upon Christian
education as a nurturing or even proselytising process has been replaced by a greater
emphasis upon teaching world religions and a less theological emphasis upon the teaching
of Christianity. Inevitably attention focussed upon the teaching of the living world
religions rather than archaic or primal religion, and this development interacted with the
study and teaching of religion in higher education to reinforce the emphasis upon the
major living religions.
4. Possible Future Direction
So far we have looked at the contrast between the classical and contemporary approaches
to the study of religion. There is much more that could be said but it is time to press on
and try to erect, on the basis of our work, possible future directions for the study of
religion.
(a) What Religious Data are Involved in the Study of Religion? We saw above how
contemporary interest in the study of religion centres mainly upon the contemporary
major living religions. In fact this is only a three-quarter truth, even in western academia.
Continental European scholars are more likely to make greater use of the data of the
religions of antiquity, the classical forms of the major religions, and (to a lesser extent)
primal religions, whereas Anglo-Saxon scholars are more likely to make use of the data of
the major living religions in their contemporary as well as classical form. The reasons for
this are partly academic, but there are non-academic causes too the lack on most of the
continent of an imperial background, the smaller presence of immigrants, the lesser
presence of eastern sects, a lesser facility in the English language, a weaker concern for
15
new forms of religious education, a greater predilection for Christian inward-lookingness,
and relatively less contact with religious change.
However, as we have seen, the contemporary religious scene in regard to both
study and practice is far wider than the confines of Europe. And in principle the study of
religion has to do with the study of all religious traditions. No religions are excluded from
the study of religion whether they be ancient or modern, living or dead, primal or major.
And let us be clear that there is a connection between the kind of religious data that a
scholar studies and the theories and methods that the scholar is likely to develop as a
result of wrestling with those religious data. For example, had Wilfred Cantwell Smith
not begun his career in Islamic Studies, had Eliade not gone to India or used the data of
primal religions, and had Dumezil not immersed himself in Indo-European Studies, it is
likely that their theoretical approach to the study of religion would have taken a different
course. Data and theory are interlinked. What then are the different kinds of religious
data involved in the study of religion? What are the different varieties of world religions?
(i) Firstly, there are the living religious traditions of the world. Five of them can be
classed as major: the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions, and a
case can be made for designating the Baha'is as a major tradition. The first five certainly
have an impressive history, a worldwide presence and a complex nature and this
compounds the problems involved in trying to understand and study them.
(ii) Other religious traditions are active and alive on the face of the earth today,
but it is disputable whether they can be classed as major. They include what we might call
the minor living traditions: the Confucians, the Jains, the Parsis, the Sikhs, and the
Taoists. Although less 'major' than the first group, they are unique and significant in
their own right.
(iii) A third facet of the present-day religious scene is the presence of various new
religious movements of one sort or another. There are many of them and they range from
the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Spiritualists, and
Swedenborgians to the Cargo Cults of Melanesia, the New Religions of Japan, the
Rastafarians and the Unification Church. It is estimated that in the United States alone
there are something over 900 new Christian religious movements, and around 600 new
religious movements with no roots in Christianity.
(iv) A fourth factor on the world scene can be summed up under the heading of
primal religion. There are thousands of primal tribes and therefore thousands of primal
religions scattered over the surface of the planet. They lacked writing (at any rate until
recently), and they generally lack scriptures and historical documents. The hallmarks of
their religious life tend to be sacred stories in the form of myths together with the rituals
and symbols that are handed down from one generation to another.
(v) In the fifth place there are religious traditions that are no longer alive on the
face of the earth. At one time humans had access to transcendence through the medium of
these archaic religions but they are present no more: they are dead. Examples are
Palaeolithic and Neolithic religion, Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion, Greek and
Roman religion, Gnostic and Manichaean religion, and the Aztecs, Incas and Mayas of
the Americas.
(vi) A final group are the secular religions which function as 'religions' from one
point-of-view and are secular alternatives to religion from another point-of-view. They
include Marxism, Humanism and Nationalism. Whether they can be called 'religions' is a
moot point. Nevertheless they operate as what Tillich called quasi-religions and they have
the functional force of religions.
Such is the vastness and complexity of the field of world religions. All of them in
principle have an equal right to be studied even though, in the nature of things, some will
be studied more than others. In practice different methodological approaches tend to
concentrate upon certain kinds of religious traditions; for example anthropologists often
16
study primal religions, sociologists are more likely to study new religious movements, philologists
may be drawn to literate dead religions, pre-historians of religion may be
interested in non-literate dead religions, social scientists may study secular religions, and
historians of religion may home in on the major or minor living religions.
(b) Global History of Religion as a Bedrock of the Stu4Y of Religion. The history
of religion has always been a key element in the study of religion and it has recently
become possible to establish a global framework for the history of religion. Upon this
framework of pegs the history of religion can be hung.
There are methodological problems associated with creating this global history of
religion. It presupposes the western historical-critical method but yet relies upon the
interpretation of pre-historical artefacts; it is difficult to insert primal religions into
global history, because of their lack of historical documents; it is necessary to establish
the relationship between 'secular' history and 'religious' history; it is not easy to divide
the global history of religion into recognisable stages; it is essential to avoid evolutionary
or other 'judgmental' presuppositions; it is not easy to conceptualize how different caches
of historical records can be fed into a global history of religion, and last but not least the
history keeps on changing either through the discovery of new historical records or
through the reinterpretation of old ones. For example, the dates of Zarathustra have
recently been recalculated by scholars such as Mary Boyce, and the same has happened to
the dates of the Buddha in the work of scholars such as Richard Gombrich.
We are now in a position to layout a framework for a global history of religion into
which new historical discoveries and reinterpretations can be inserted. Although this
works better with historical religions than with pre-historic and primal ones it does
provide a good groundwork for the general study of religion. i) The first stage, that of
Palaeolithic religion, is shrouded in the mists of pre-history. Palaeolithic humans were
hunter-gatherers. From half-a million years ago, with Peking Man, there is evidence of
the ritual treatment of skulls; there is evidence of burial from about 75,000 B C E; and
from about 30,000 B C E onwards there is the evidence of cave paintings that illustrated
Palaeolithic religiousness. It is easy to read too much into the evidence of Palaeolithic
skulls, artefacts and caves but that far-off age brought a breakthrough to 'humanity' and
evidence of an early religiousness in human beings.
(ii) The second age, starting about 10,000 B C E, was the Neolithic, which gave to
human beings a close relationship to the earth and the start of dominance over it by the
creative invention of agriculture, animal husbandry, spinning, weaving and pottery. The
sacred was seen to be active in nature as well as in human beings in a rhythmic and
cyclical way. There was felt to be an inter-linking between human beings, the earth that
they tended, and the transcendent powers (including female) that were held to reside in
both. Their religious consciousness remained this-worldly; it was experienced in groups,
and their myths, rituals and symbols held persons, nature and the transcendent together
in a linking bond.
(iii) The next stage saw the rise of town civilisations about 3,5°0 B C E in
Mesopotamia and then in Egypt with diffusion into the Indus Valley, and a spontaneous
generation of towns in China. The invention of the plough, sea travel, irrigation,
metallurgy, and above all writing enabled town-dwellers to develop interests and
specialisations outside agriculture. Contacts were opened up with other areas by sea or
land so that trade and ideas could expand. Religious specialisms also came into being in
the form of separate priesthoods, temples, festivals and theologies; sacred kings such as
the Pharoahs made sure that religion remained linked to life. Although. humans, the
earth and transcendent forces stayed interconnected, there were premonitions of the later
distancing of town civilisations from nature, and existential questions to do with meaning,
suffering and life after death began to surface.
17
(iv) The next major stage (there were other minor ones) emerged in the Axial Age
around the sixth century B C E. Great religious leaders and thinkers arose independently
in four areas of the world: Greece, the Middle East, India and China. The Ionian
philosophers in Greece, the Hebrew prophets and the out-workings of Zarathustra's
genius in the Middle East, the emergence of the Buddha, the Mahavira and the Hindu
Upanishads in India, and the presence of Confucius and the premonitions of Taoism in
China heralded a great religious and cultural breakthrough. With the hindsight of history
we can see from that time the emergence of four great civilisations moulded by religious
factors, and they were to co-exist for two thousand years on a roughly equal, parallel and
separate basis. They were: Europe stemming from Greece and eventually becoming
Christendom; India stemming from Hindu roots but using Buddhist, Christian, Jain,
Jewish, Muslim and Parsi sources to build a multi-religious grandeur; China using its
three ways, the Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist, to form the glory of Chinese civilisation;
and the Middle East, which after a time of decline recovered its former elan through the
rise and spread of Islam. None of these civilisations or religions was dominant over the
others and they remained roughly in balance. They were civilisations that were affected
and formed by religious forces.
Although these four religious civilisations were different, common factors can be
detected that began to distance them from developments elsewhere in the world, for
example in primal areas. There was a strong sense that one's present worldly life was not
paramount by contrast with the pull of another world in heaven, moksha, or nirvana; a
sense of the inwardness of the real self and true faith as seen in various monastic systems;
a sense that reason, analysis and intellectual synthesis could be important in religion; a
sense that through mission religions could grow and conceivably become universal; a
sense that religious communities, rituals, ethics, social involvement, scriptures, concepts,
aesthetics, and spirituality were integral parts of religion and of culture; and a sense of
the importance of transcendence and its mediating focus, whether it be God in Christ,
Allah through the Koran, Yahweh through the Torah, Brahman through a Hindu
personal deity or the Atman, or Nirvana through the Buddha or the Dharma.
(v) The next main stage in global religious history began in the sixteenth century C
E when religious and other matters were dominated by the rise of the West. Europe broke
out of its medieval captivity through seapower and later through technological power so
that it came to supremacy over the other civilisations with which it had formerly been
equal. It also un covered new worlds such as the Americas, Southern Africa and
Australasia inhabited by primal religious peoples. This period brought together a time of
great strength in the European West with a time of relative weakness in India, the Middle
East and China. The vibrant West became dominant.
The religious tradition of the West, Christianity, also spread into different parts of
the world. The newly discovered continents of South America, North America, Southern
Africa, and Australasia were settled by Europeans and became Christian continents.
Christian missionaries went into most parts of the world, partly on the coat-tails of the
empires that came into being, and churches, albeit sometimes small ones, were set up in
many areas in the world.
The West not only took its religion (albeit in many denominational forms), it also
importantly took its scientific and industrial revolutions into the wider world. At one level
this brought medical facilities, material progress, city life, railways, factories and
expanded trade. At another level it also introduced among intellectual elites elsewhere the
scientific secular worldview and towards the end of this period, which lasted until 1945, it
brought an awareness of nationalism and also the Marxist version of the secular
viewpoint. Through western science and technology the world began to come together and
it seemed to become smaller.
Again comparisons are difficult but certain general points can be made.
18
Primal religions began to undergo dislocation in various parts of the world;
laymen and vernacular devotion became more significant in the major religions; the
relevance of religion for bettering life in this world received more attention; other
religions and cultures were impressed by and to some extent reacted against the West's
cultivation of progress; human domination over nature began to increase .apace; and a
greater knowledge of other religions came into being both at the level of scholarship and
at the level of believers, although full-blown dialogue was not yet in view.
The sixth stage in the global history of religion is the one we are living in now. We
covered its main facets earlier and so will not repeat them now. This sketch of the outline
of a global history of religion has been all too brief. It has merit in itself by providing a
framework into which historians of religion can insert their stories, or make their
changes, or interpolate their interpretations.
It also has two other merits. In the first place it opens up many fruitful avenues of
historical comparison. To mention but four out of numerous possibilities, around 1250 C
E there was a convergence of philosophical/ theological intellectual syntheses in many
parts of the world through Maimonides in the Jewish world, Aquinas and Bonaventura in
the Christian world, Chu Hsi in the neo-Confucian Chinese world, Ramanuja in the
TamilfVedanta Hindu world, and (somewhat earlier) AI-Ghazaii in the Muslim world.
Most of these remarkable and architectonic systematic syntheses of faith were done in
isolation from each other yet at roughly the same time in different parts of the world. The
Axial Age itself is an even better example of an age when great things were happening
independently in varied parts of the globe.
Another example of historical comparison can be seen in the sixteenth century C
E. There was a simultaneous emergence of devotional vernacular religion in scattered
areas of the world. The Protestant Reformation arose in Europe using Luther's German
or Cranmer's English or other vernaculars as its medium of expression; in India Guru
Nanak's devotionalism through the medium of Punjabi heralded the rise of the Sikh
tradition; in India also Tulsi Das wrote his great paeon to Rama in Hindi, not in Sanskrit,
and Caitanya went into devotional ecstasies in Bengali; in Persia there emerged the new
Shi'ite devotionalism using Persian; and, in Buddhist South East Asia, Pure Land
devotionalism had already stressed the role of laymen and used local vernaculars in
praise of Amida Buddha.
A final example relates to our present age. As religious traditions have responded
to change it is possible to trace comparatively four different responses that have been
made. The first is to retreat into one's shell and to pretend that change is not happening;
the second is the fundamentalist option which works for the creative or sometimes noncreative
restoration of tradition; the third is the way of evolutionary reform which seeks
to enable religions to adapt to the changes around them; and the fourth is the way of
radical reform which demands a radical reinterpretation of tradition in order to do
justice to the crisis that is held to have arisen. Studies of all these developments in
individual traditions are in progress, especially in relation to the various fundamentalist
movements in different religions. More interesting is to take a comparative overview of
the responses to change across religions, and this kind of scholarship is beginning to
happen.
A second merit of a global history of religion is that it highlights periods when
there have been radical effects of one or more religions on other traditions. Religious
traditions have deeply affected each other either for better or for worse and interborrowing
between religions, whether at a conscious or unconscious level, has been rife.
Examples of inter-borrowing can be found widely, for example the interchange between
Hindus, Buddhists and Jains in the sixth century C E; the interplay between Jews,
Mysteries, Greek religion and thought and Christianity at the time of Christian origins;
the interplay between Mani, the Zoroastrians and others in fourth century C E Persia;
19
the interplay between the San Chiao, the three ways of China (Confucian, Taoist and
Buddhist) at various times in Chinese history; the events surrounding the emergence of
the Sikhs as a separate tradition in sixteenth century C E India; and the influence of the
West and Christianity upon the modern Hindu reformers.
(c) The Role of Phenomenology of Religion. Phenomenology of religion has four
important roles in the study of religion as a non-theological and non-reductionist
enterprise.
(i) In the first place its categories of epoche (putting one's convictions into brackets
and suspending judgment in order to understand) and Einfühlllng (empathy with the
position of others) are helpful in the general study of religion. They avoid the
interpolation of value judgments which get in the way of a real understanding of the
position of others, and they open up the possibility of seeing the world through the eyes of
other people. As such they remain important general principles behind the whole
enterprise of the study of religion.
(ii) Secondly, the phenomenological aim to take the position of believers seriously
in order to avoid misrepresenting them is another important principle. Verifying with
others that our representation of them accords roughly with how they see themselves is an
important verification principle. It depends on what kind of other does the verifyingpresumably
a rigid fundamentalist verification would not suffice! Nor is conscious
verification by believers the only criterion of understanding. There are unconscious and
structural factors at work as well. Nevertheless an empathetic awareness of the position of
others by checking our understanding with their own self-apprehension is important not
only for our critical understanding of their being in the world but also for our own
critical self-awareness of our own.
(iii) Thirdly, the phenomenological attempt to give greater integration to the study
of religion by maintaining that 'religion' is at the heart of this study rather than the
methodological canons of another discipline retains its significance as a principle. As
such, phenomenology remains a coordinating endeavour within the study of religion
rather than a methodological approach based upon the canons of history, theology,
sociology, psychology, or any other discipline with its controlling roots outside religion.
This does not mean that other approaches are not important. Nor does it make
phenomenology into a kind of religion in itself It is part of a wider enterprise-but an
important part.
(iv) Fourthly, the phenomenological stress upon comparison remains deeply
relevant. The particular method of comparison opened up by the principle of eidetic
vision, basically that of phenomenological typology; is only one of the possible ways of
comparing religions. Historical comparison that was mentioned earlier which takes
historical contexts seriously in a way that phenomenology does not, and the method of
comparison in depth between two religions whereby it becomes clear that typologies do
not always work (for example Christ is in some ways more comparable with the Koran as
the Islamic Word of God than with Muhammad) are of equal significance (albeit Christ
can still be compared with Muhammad). Nevertheless the phenomenological emphasis
upon the deep significance of comparison as a category remains important even though
phenomenological typology is only one among many methods that can be used.
(d) Complementarity of Methods and Approaches. We have seen how a whole set
of disciplines and approaches in interplay make up the study of religion. It incorporates a
field of studies rather than being a narrow enterprise. No methods are excluded whether
they centre upon religion or not, whether they belong to the social sciences or the
humanities, whether their approach is inductive or hermeneutic, whether they focus upon
data or persons. The only exception applies to the type of method that centres upon one
religion and explicitly applies its categories to others (as with some kinds of theology and
20
even philosophy) and the type of method that seeks to absolutise itself into a metaphysic
thereby exceeding its methodological brief by attempting to reduce religion to itself.
This book implies the need for a complementarity of approaches. Although each
chapter focusses upon a particular approach and in this respect advances its claims, this
does not imply that other approaches are inappropriate or that anyone approach should
unduly dominate the others. However, despite the variety of materials, issues, theories
and angles thereby introduced into the study of religion, the stance of complementarity
does not obviate the need for overall integration in the field. As we have seen, that need
for integration is partly supplied by the combined roles of history and phenomenology. To
this can be added the role of anthropology of religion which provides a bedrock of data on
primal religion arising out of empirical studies.
In what way, then, are the different approaches to the study of religion complementary?
In large part because they operate a division of labour, and we can see this by means of
two examples.
(i) It is clear that the study of religion is different from natural science insofar as it
deals with data that involve persons rather than data that centre upon objects in nature.
The study of data involving persons relates the study of religion to various disciplines in
the arts and social sciences. It can be seen in terms of the religion of groups of persons
(sociology and anthropology' of religion), the religion of individuals (psychology of
religion), the faith and intentionality of persons (phenomenology and hermeneutics of
religion), the myths and texts of persons (the study of myths and texts), and so on. This
involvement of religious data with persons, their social groupings, their individual
religious experiences, their unconscious moulding by heredity and environment, their
history, means that the study of religion has to do with human beings and that it needs
complementary approaches to be dealt with in its wholeness.
(ii) Since 1945 various models of religion have been evolved to try and afford a
framework of understanding whereby religions can be seen as organisms containing
different elements or dimensions. Two contributors to this volume have produced models
that are fairly similar, and these models point to the need for a complementary set of
approaches to do justice to the study of religions as organisms. Ninian Smart's model
stresses six dimensions of religion: doctrines, myths, ethics, rituals, social institutions, and
religious experience. Frank Whaling's model stresses eight elements of religion: religious
communities, rituals, ethics, social and political involvement of religions in wider society,
scripture/myth, concepts, aesthetics, and spirituality. Doctrines and concepts imply some
input from, but not control by, philosophy and theology; religious communities and social
involvement come mainly under the umbrella of sociology; scripture involves the work of
textual experts; religious experience and spirituality include the expertise of psychologists
of religion; myth is studied partly by anthropology, as are rituals; ethics involves a range
of skills; aesthetics invites the skills of iconography and fine art. These divisions of labour
are not watertight but they are clearly relevant. The study of religion is, in the nature of
things, a collaborative enterprise involving a complementarity of skills.
(e) New Developments in the Stutdy of Religion. Many new developments in the
study of religion are brought out in this volume. In closing this introduction let me briefly
mention seven new developments that appear to be of more than passing importance.
(i) The role of aesthetics in religion is now receiving more attention. For most of
history and for most people aesthetics in the form of painting, mosaics, music, sculpture,
calligraphy and wider literature has been more relevant and compelling than studying
doctrines or even reading scripture. Giotto's frescoes of Jesus at Padua and of St. Francis
at Assisi, Buddha images illustrating through the five main mudras his compassion and
significance, Indian classical dance, Muslim calligraphy, and many other aesthetic
representations, not to mention the shape and intentionality of churches, mosques,
temples, synagogues, pagodas and gurdwaras have given to ordinary people a visual
21
theology that was vivid and real. The study of the aesthetic side of religion, both in
separate traditions and in comparative studies, is growing apace. It is likely to continue to
grow;
(ii) Another element in the above models, namely spirituality and religious
experience, is receiving more attention and study. This is partly due to a rise of interest in
spirituality in the mainstream religions, in new religious movements, and in the western
New Age phenomenon. However, academic and publishing attention is being given to the
whole area of spirituality as well as experiential interest. This is emerging not only in the
work of psychologists of religion but also in major textual series. For example the Classics
of Western Spirituality published by the Paulist Press beginning in 1978 has brought out
nearly 70 volumes of spirituality classics from not only the Christian tradition (although
mainly so) but also from the Jewish, Muslim, and American Indian traditions. Another
series, World Spirituality: An Encyclopaedic History of the Religious Quest, published by
Crossroad, New York, beginning in 1985 and planned in 25 volumes, is nearing
completion. A series on the Classics of Eastern Spirituality is also planned as an update of
Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East.
(iii) We have mentioned earlier the rise of interest in a global theology or religion
which overlaps the traditional boundaries of theology and the study of religion. Its
concern is to conceptualise universal theological categories that transcend the
particularities of particular theologies in order to deal with theology as such rather than
the theology of a particular religion. Its view of transcendence is wide and open and not
basically ontological or essentialist. Its concern is to speak religiously on global issues
beginning from the concerns of the global situation rather than from the concerns of
particular theologies. It is important in itself; it may well be becoming a new discipline;
and it may herald a new relationship between theology and the study of religion based
upon complementariness rather than suspicion.
(iv) A fourth nascent development is the growing interest of the study of religion in
global issues and what might be called global scholarship. Passages in this book glance
briefly at the relationship between the study of religion and wider scholarship, and at the
relationship between the study of religion and our emerging global world. One of the
main tasks of the study of religion is to study world religions which are global in setting,
and it bestraddles a number of disciplines and interests that have as their areas of
concern the study of global matters involving nature, human beings, and transcendence.
The days when the study of religion was suspected from the side of faith and neglected
from the side of reason are passing or past. That the study of religion should play a
creative role in contemporary general scholarship is increasingly seen to be important not
only for the study of religion but also for the world of learning and the world in general.
(v) The study of religion is also becoming more involved in political matters. This
is partly because religion itself is having a wider impact in the world in either the negative
sense of Waco and Jonestown, or religious conflicts in Sri Lanka, the Punjab, the Middle
East, Northern Ireland, the Sudan, and Bosnia-or in the positive sense of making eirenical
contributions to local and global matters in various parts of the world.
Samuel Huntington's quixotic comments about Islam being the new analogue for the
USSR in the Cold War as an adversary, and some of the remarks on religion in Paul
Kennedy's otherwise intelligent Preparing for the Twenty-first Century (1993), illustrate
the interest taken in religion by political commentators, and the need for insightful advice
to be given by scholars of religion to political leaders at all levels. Good books on religion
are increasingly being read by political leaders and advisors, and the study of religion has
an important part to play in local and global political affairs. Simple matters such as the
setting up of significant museums of religion in places is disparate as Glasgove Marburg
and Moscow are straws in the wind. It is very likely that the input of the study of religion
into politics and political thinking will grow in the near future.
22
(vi) A sixth matter of growing interest to the study of religion concerns the role of
women and gender in religion. Ursula King has formed a Women's Group at the
international meetings of the main International Association for the History of Religions,
and her books such as Women and Spirituality: Voices of Protest and Promise (1989) are
part of a growing input into this field. Interest in this topic can only increase.
(vii) A final matter picks up the theme of emancipation within a different context.
In this book the role of religion in processes of liberation from oppression is mentioned in
connection with studies of religious movements that have a prophetic, puritanical,
messianic, or reform element within them. Religion is seen not as an obstacle to social
development but as a spur to social regeneration. More studies of religious liberation
movements can be expected.
5. Conclusion
We hope that readers will find this book to be a worthy companion to Jacques
Waardenburg's Classical Approaches to the Study o Religion, and that will inevitably be
forthcoming when people wrestle with matters of such immense scope serve creatively to
advance the cause of the study of religion. Our purpose has been so to summarise the
contemporary approaches to the study of religion that momentum may be given to such
an advance at an inter-disciplinary, inter-cultural and inter-personal level.
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