ignore the claims they made—or even become enamored
with them without surrendering any real sense of identity or
control. At the beginning of the twentieth century colonial
endeavors presented Japanese scholars with similar opportu-
nities, although their range was more limited.
For the colonized the situation was different. Quite
aside from possessing different histories of the formulation
and organization of knowledge, people on the receiving end
of the colonial project did not need to develop academic
fields to learn about the “sacred books of Europe.” Missiona-
ries were more than willing to provide that knowledge, even
if colonial governments did not always appreciate their ef-
forts. And far from being able to study the claims and prac-
tices of the colonial rulers from the detached perspective of
a supposedly disinterested, value-free science, colonized peo-
ple were forced to define themselves over against claims by
representatives of a dominant power that threatened to un-
dercut their traditional identity and destroy their intellectual
autonomy.
The early leaders in the academic study of religion were
in fact the Europeans, with help from the Japanese and
North Americans. Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to see
the study of religion merely as a colonialist enterprise. It may
also be seen as in part a response in the arena of reflection
on religion, and not always the dominant one, to fundamen-
tal infrastructural changes that made colonialism as well as
nationalism possible: the increasing compression of space
and time as a result of ever more rapid technologies of trans-
portation and communication. The results of this space-time
compression include increased personal contacts between
peoples previously separated, closer economic, political, and
cultural interdependence, and substantial increases in the
scale of institutions of knowledge as well as manufacturing
and trade. This compression facilitated the appearance of an
academic study of religion not simply by granting greater ac-
cess to data but also by making confessional frames for
knowledge less convincing—although they certainly re-
mained convincing to many—and creating a context in
which knowledge of religion not limited by confessional
boundaries became more desirable. It did so under the shad-
ow of increased nationalism and colonialism, which both re-
sulted from and enforced inequitable control of new technol-
ogies as well as intellectual and cultural activities.
From a long perspective, what may be remarkable about
the institutionalization of the academic study of religion is
not that it first took place in Europe, Japan, and North
America but how quickly it occurred all over the world.
(That occurrence should not be isolated from the simulta-
neous emergence of many other aspects of contemporary life,
from scientific medicine to weapons technology.) The insti-
tutionalization of the study of religion came in two waves.
The first wave occurred in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, when Europeans along with North
Americans and Japanese took the lead in establishing univer-
sity positions and programs (Lausanne 1871; Boston 1873;
Tokyo 1903) as well as professional societies (United States
1890 [dissolved ten years later], Europe [International Asso-
ciation for the History of Religions] 1900, Japan 1930) for
the study of religion. (In 1905 only the Tokyo chair carried
the title “science of religion.”) Research and publication
were, of course, the inevitable concomitants of such founda-
tions—in one sense they were their raison d’être—symbolized
but certainly not exhausted in the English-speaking world by
the massive Sacred Books of the East series. The second wave,
which came in the third quarter of the twentieth century in
the wake of decolonization and the cold war, was much more
wide-ranging. It saw the development of programs for the
academic study of religion in sub-Saharan Africa; Australia,
New Zealand, and Oceania; Latin America; and to a limited
extent South Asia and the Middle East, along with the
founding of new programs in Europe as well as a burgeoning
of programs in the United States.
These efforts have met with varying success. Despite a
long tradition, Japan has programs in the academic study of
religion in only about one percent of its universities; by con-
trast, by the 1970s the corresponding number in the United
States was about one third. Such efforts have also encoun-
tered a variety of challenges. For example, programs in sub-
Saharan Africa have suffered from a lack of infrastructure as
well as a loss of intellectual talent to more prosperous parts
of the globe. In most places a primary challenge has come
from dominant religions and ideologies. French institutions
have been adamantly secular for over a century, but else-
where in Western Europe dominant programs in Christian
theology have outdone the academic study of religion in
competition for scarce resources and public status; for exam-
ple, in the United Kingdom the leading programs have been
in so-called new universities (Lancaster, Manchester, Stir-
ling), and a similar pattern is visible to some extent in Ger-
many (Bayreuth, Bremen), despite traditions in older univer-
sities (Berlin, Bonn, Marburg, Tübingen). Programs in
Eastern Europe and China have had to negotiate a state ide-
ology antagonistic to religion, while programs in the United
States, which blossomed during the cold war, have needed
to negotiate a state ideology whose opposition to “godless
communism” favored religious commitment. In the Middle
East, space-time compression has brought about a very dif-
ferent relationship with the rest of the world: the rerouting
of formerly vigorous, intercontinental trade either around or,
in the case of air travel, over the region and a shift to oil as
a source of wealth, often actually or seemingly controlled by
foreigners. This context has encouraged a religiously defined
cultural loyalism. Although some programs in the academic
study of religion have arisen in the region, most work takes
place in the context of the presumed superiority of Islam as
God’s final revelation.
The academic study of religion has often justified itself
in terms of its public utility. For example, in Japan before
1945 some advocated pursuing it as a contribution to nation-
al unity. In postcolonial Africa scholars turned to the study8764 STUDY OF RELIGION: AN OVERVIEW