The historical development of this academic discipline, on both discursive
and institutional levels, is completely intertwined with the development of
various initially European modernities, later exported to most regions of the
world. At the heart of these modernities lay the powerful positivistic scientific
discourse out of which emerged a ‘science of religions’ (Religionswissenschaft)
or ‘sciences of religions’, in opposition to the pre-modern medieval theological
discourses, mostly in their European Catholic and Protestant Christian expres-
sions. From this struggle, mirrored in the large battles to define non-religious
political mechanisms to supplant the powerful place of Christian religious insti-
tutions, emerged a unique tension within the early academic study of religions,
epitomized by the simple question: Is there a place for theology in the scientific
study of religions? The answers continue to polarize many scholars of religions
in a way that the recent resurgence of religious and spiritual identities and
practices is only exacerbating worldwide.
These discursive and ideological debates often take for granted the demo-
cratic space necessary for their existence, a pre-condition to the academic study
of religions which is far from being a given in most NAWA countries. In
addition, they often take for granted the economic underpinnings behind
institutions that produce knowledge and know-how. Behind the word
‘academia’ or its adjective ‘academic’ lives a complexity of different institutional
structures funded by a variety of sources. Their respective interests in the
promotion, management, stifling or even repression of a religion or a religious
ethos or religious power in one form or another, including in the public or
private spheres, compete through the use of such powerful institutional markers
as ‘academic’ or ‘university’.
As was the case over a hundred years ago in Europe and North America,
today, the modern academy, whether in Europe and North America (and to
a much lesser degree Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand) or in NAWA, is
made up of a variety of coexisting higher education institutions that span the
whole spectrum from religiously to anti-religiously motivated, from spiritually
grounded to not at all, from exclusively to inclusively focused in its own
legitimization, and from openly pluralist to sectarian in its justifications to the
outside world. These four vectors represent only a few of the possible ways
we can begin to map out the variety of universities and research centers that
claim to be part of the ‘academy’ today. The battle to define ‘who is in and
who is not’ remains tense because disciplinary approaches are still mostly the
result of rationalization processes that link them to one form of identity or
another, with great competition and zeal for conversion to one’s own version
of the ‘Truth’. The space for such debates often requires more than what a
university provides; it requires a degree of freedom of expression within a given
society. Indeed, it seems that there is a direct link between the emergence of
a modern academic study of religions and democratic nation-state building.88
PATRICE BRODEUR