an introductionGod. If God is in fact dead (whatever one might mean by such a state-
ment), Religious Studies is alive and thriving. According to a “White
Paper” published by the American Academy of Religion, Religious
Studies majors have increased twenty-two percent in the past decade with
similar percentage increases in the number of total courses offered, course
enrollments, and faculty positions in the field at the national level in
America. The number of majors is even greater in public institutions with
a forty percent increase. According to the study, courses in Islam and
Hinduism almost doubled from 2000 to 2005, while courses in Christian
theology, Hebrew scripture, and New Testament were flat or down. This
result points to a shift in the field “away from the study of Christianity in
isolation.” This impetus has led to a rethinking of the “Seminary Model”
for the Religious Studies department, a reconsideration that began
decades ago as some colleges and universities moved toward a more
cross-cultural and multi-methodological approach to the subject.
Although theology was called the “queen of the sciences’ during the
Middle Ages, it does not tell us much about modern Religious Studies, a
recent academic discipline taught in earlier times by faculty with semi-
nary backgrounds. In the present-day academy, there is a movement to
expunge theology from the undergraduate curriculum, an extreme posi-
tion with which many academics do not concur because theology is part
of the intellectual heritage of various religious traditions and not simply
the Christian tradition. Thus theology forms part of the history of ideas
as does philosophy, psychology, and many other disciplines.
As an academic discipline, Religious Studies was the product of
Enlightenment thought. Enlightenment thinkers, such as Immanuel Kant,
sought to know all kinds of things within an optimistic context that
believed human reason and understanding could grasp anything within
limits of these intellectual tools. This optimism was combined with an
intellectual curiosity, individual freedom, tolerance, and confidence in
the inevitable nature of progress related to scientific discoveries and
rationality. Enlightenment thinkers were convinced they could learn the
secrets of nature and the physical laws that governed the universe with
the ultimate goal of gaining control of nature in order to improve human
life. At the center of the Enlightenment vision there stood the rational,
self-determined, autonomous human being, possessing epistemological
optimism and a self-confident sense of anthropocentrism. This optimistic
vision extended to the study of religions and their concepts.
The discipline of Religious Studies can be traced back to an academic
German distinction between Religionswissenschaft (science of religions)
in contrast to Naturwissenschaft (natural science).The former field is part
of what German scholars call Geistwissenschaften (sciences of the human