into the cultural and organizational foundations of world society’ (p. 114). In
very broad terms, they postulate a global shift in what counts as universal,
objective knowledge (citing Bourdieu 1988: xii) from an embrace of spiritual
forces, both religious and ‘idealistic’ (e.g. art as revelatory, the poet as ‘genius’),
hierarchical organization, and categorical structures to naturalistic–materialistic
explanation, horizontal organization, and dynamic networks. Among other
things, their model predicts a decrease in what was earlier an important facet
of the university, designated ‘theology’. The data, however, reveal something
different. In the period 1915–1935, theology claimed about 4.5 percent of the
faculty in universities worldwide. (Frank and Gabler speculate that earlier the
percentage was higher.) In line with their model, by 1955–1975 theology had
lost almost two-thirds of its faculty share. But then something unexpected
happened. The percentage of ‘theology’ faculty began to rise (p. 110).
This pattern interests us because in their tabulation Frank and Gabler did
not distinguish between theology and religious studies. They themselves
(personal communication) are inclined to attribute the faculty share gained by
‘theology’ to the emergence of a manner of studying religions more in accord
with the new patterns defining universal, objective knowledge, what we have
been calling the study of religion or religious studies. That inclination is at
least consistent with the inverse relationship Stausberg observes in Western
Europe between the decline in institutional Christendom and the rise of religious
studies, but much more work needs to be done. For one thing, it is not actually
known what part religious studies played in reversing the decline in ‘theology’
worldwide. For another, the rest of the world has not undergone the secular-
ization that Europe has. Perhaps the political emergence of very strong religious
commitments, often called fundamentalisms, in places as diverse as the United
States, West Asia, and India during the 1970s contributed to the observed
average rise in the weight of theology worldwide—or perhaps not. Universities
may adhere to different standards of knowledge from those that prevail in the
broader population. Think of tensions between Indian academics and Hindu
nationalists, or between university biologists in the US state of Kansas and
advocates of intelligent design. If further research does bear out that it was
the emergence of religious studies that led to greater weight for ‘theology’ in
universities worldwide, a further question arises: did the relative distance of
Latin America and North Africa–West Asia from the development of religious
studies result from the prevalence in those regions of a different set of cultural
assumptions about what makes for universal, objective knowledge? In
discussing the neo-liberal assumptions that often accompany the study of
religion, Brodeur’s account of North Africa and West Asia suggests that this
may indeed be the case. But Brodeur also emphasizes the political dimension,
namely, a link between the study of religions and democratic institutions. That
postulated link is attractive, but it is also complicated both by the attraction
that fascism and Nazism exercised on earlier European exemplars of the study
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
TOWARD A GLOBAL VISION OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES
307
