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              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





In 1984/85 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 well-received, 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. 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 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.

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.

(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 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
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.

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 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
tape-recordings, 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 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 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
value-judgements 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 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 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.

(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
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 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.

(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.

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 non-creative 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 inter-borrowing 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; 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 verifying-presumably 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 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 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.

(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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