BoundariesThe Afterword considers several topics key to a global vision of religious
studies: history, institutionalization, and objects, methods, and theories. But
one key issue needs to be addressed at the start, and that is the issue of
demarcation. Just what do we include in the study of religions? This is a
particularly thorny problem. While few ichthyologists, for example, aspire to
being fish, or perhaps better, presumably no fish aspire to being ichthy-
ologists, quite a few religious people are interested in studying religions,
precisely because they wish to be better at being religious. Some want to
demonstrate that their own religious convictions are the best and perhaps rank
other convictions in relation to their own, an approach once called by some
the comparative study of religions or comparative religion. Others want to
identify and appropriate the truths contained in a variety of religions, the flip
side of traditional missiology and apologetics. Still others want some-
how to bring all religions together via a universal theology or philosophia
perennis. All may work with something of a global vision.
One prominent spokesperson for a global vision in religious studies was
Wilfred Cantwell Smith. His writing and teaching have inspired much work
in global theology, a field to which he himself contributed (Smith 1981). In
an early, programmatic essay, Smith wrote:The traditional form of Western scholarship in the study of men’s [sic]
religion was that of an impersonal presentation of an ‘it’. The first great
innovation in recent times has been the personalization of the faiths
observed, so that one finds a discussion of a ‘they’. Presently the observer
becomes personally involved, so that the situation is one of a ‘we’ talking
about a ‘they’. The next step is a dialogue, where ‘we’ talk to ‘you’. If
there is listening and mutuality, this may become that ‘we’ talk with‘you’.
The culmination of this progress is when ‘we all’ are talking witheach
other about ‘us’.
(Smith 1959: 34)So far as it goes, I agree with what Smith has to say. And given the levels of
violence sometimes associated with religion, one can hardly decry the efforts
made when religious people sit down together and talk with one another about
their most cherished convictions. But the passage quoted leaves at least one
important question unexamined. In what register are ‘we all’ talking when we
are talking as scholars of religion with each other about us?
Margaret Miles (2000: 472) gave one answer in her address as president of
the American Academy of Religion. The terms ‘theological studies’ and ‘the
study of religion’, she wrote,4
GREGORY D. ALLES