Religious Studies: A Global View

Finally, a global study of religion may face a practical challenge that

characterizes all human intellectual activity, but one that particularly

characterizes the study of religion. If Robert McCauley is right, the human brain

finds religion easy but science considerably more difficult. In addition, I suspect

that the study of religion tends to draw people who find religious thinking

personally attractive. That is probably especially true where, as in much of the

world, the study of religion is localized in its own academic unit. Given both

neurobiological and social dynamics, scholars of religion will probably always

face the challenge of distinguishing religious from scientifically demonstrable

claims. Among other things, that means that the study of religion as imaged in

this book will never encompass all human discourse about religion.

NOTES

1 To avoid possible ambiguity, let me say that—along the lines of Clifford Geertz’s

distinction between symbols of and symbols for—my intention is to provide a

‘vision of’ religious studies, not a ‘vision for’ religious studies, in the sense of

setting a global agenda.

2 The classification appears in other languages as follows:

Arabic: (al-d¥n) and (al-lÇht) belong to (al-

dirasÇt al-insÇn¥ya);

Chinese: (zong jiao) and (shen xue) belong to (ren wen

xue ke);

French: Religionand théologiebelong to Lettres;

Russian: (religiya) and       (teologiya) belong to y HTap



HayK(gumanitarnye nauki);

Spanish: Religiónand teologíabelong to Humanidades.

3 Some do, of course, set themselves up as gurus. I leave to one side the question

of whether large academic salaries in rich countries are justified by the value

added to material from religious traditions during the course of research. I also

recognize intellectual property issues concerning royalties from publishing

primary sources, such as traditional oral stories.

4 Discussing the Eurocentrism of the social sciences, Vineeta Sinha (2003: 12)

warns against three dangers: trivializing the issue, rationalizing it, or incor-

porating it into one’s considerations superficially.

REFERENCES

Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen 1989, The Empire Writes Back:

Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature, London: Routledge.

Barber, Benjamin R. 1995, Jihad vs. McWorld, New York: Times Books.

Borgeaud, Philippe 1999, ‘Qu’est-ce que l’histoire des religions?’ Equinoxe: Revue

des sciences humaines, vol. 21, pp. 67–83.

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GREGORY D. ALLES