of indigenous religions as a means to foster independent po-
litical and cultural identities. More broadly, Mircea Eliade
aspired to revive culture through the formulation of a “new
humanism.”
At the beginning of the twenty-first century scholars of
religions were pursuing yet another public role: providing
the general public and more specifically mass communica-
tions media with reliable information about religions (Japa-
nese scholars after the Aum Shinrikyo ̄ attacks; ReMID in
Germany and INFORM in the United Kingdom; the infor-
mation bureau of the American Academy of Religion). In ad-
dition, many countries have been wrestling with ways to
make their traditions of religious education in schools more
pluralistic. Although some have adopted a pluralistic confes-
sional approach, as in Germany, where students choose an
education in either Catholicism, Protestantism, or a more
general ethical culture, others, such as South Africa, have at
least proposed replacing confessionally based education with
a pre-university public education in the academic study of
religion.
METHODS AND ISSUES IN THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF RELI-
GION. There is still very little by way of a universally ac-
knowledged theoretical or methodological canon in the aca-
demic study of religion. One positive result is that the field
admits a considerable amount of creativity. Another result,
however, is that the remarks that follow will inevitably be id-
iosyncratic, reflecting regional and personal preferences at
least as much as any greater unity. They touch briefly upon
commonalities that unite the academic study of religion,
methods and theories of that study, and recent trends.
Commonalities. In the English-speaking world, there
has been considerable uncertainty about both the name and
character of the academic study of religion. In the last one
hundred years scholars have called this pursuit the science of
religion, comparative study of religion(s), history of reli-
gion(s), religious studies, (more colloquially) world religions,
and the academic study of religion(s). The terminology used
in this set of entries, “the academic study of religion,” re-
mains ambiguous. For example, in those parts of the world
where Christianity is the dominant religion, biblical studies
are traditionally a part of theology. As sometimes practiced,
however, biblical studies might just as well be seen as a highly
developed subfield within the academic study of religion.
Uncertainty about the name of this study finds a reflec-
tion in uncertainty about its character. Is it an academic dis-
cipline, united in the application of a specific method, or is
it an unruly, polymethodic field, including any and every ac-
ademic pursuit that somehow treats religious data? Is the ob-
ject of study—“religion”—a category sui generis, which
must be studied on its own terms, or does it conveniently
bring together elements from different areas of life, permit-
ting the reduction of the religious to the nonreligious? Is the
goal to understand human religious insights or symbols as
they come to expression in human speech and action, as one
understands the meanings of books, or is it rather to provide
explanations for various occurrences along the lines of the so-
cial and natural sciences? Does one require a special sympa-
thy for religion in order to make sense out of it, or is one
required to be an outsider—a “methodological” if not actual
atheist or agnostic—in order to see clearly? Arguments about
these and similar questions have perhaps generated more heat
and smoke than they have light. Nevertheless, one might de-
tect a trend in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centu-
ries toward a conception of the study of religions that is poly-
methodic, explanatory, at least methodologically agnostic,
and sees religion simply as a convenient category.
If the efforts of a century and a half have had uncertain
results in precisely denoting or defining the academic study
of religion, they have been somewhat more successful in cre-
ating a common language for it. Scholars have abandoned
earlier, almost Linnaean attempts to group religions into
meaningful classes—natural religions, national religions,
prophetic religions, ethical religions, world religions, and so
on—as a preliminary to locating them in grand developmen-
tal schemas. They have also abandoned attempts, inspired by
Hegel, to identify the essence of each religion in a simple
term or proposition (for example, Zoroastrianism as “the re-
ligion of struggle,” Christianity as the “religion of love” [van
der Leeuw]). But other efforts have been more successful.
Consider the matter-of-factness with which we now speak of
various religions as givens—Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism,
Shinto ̄, and so on—where, at least from a Christian or Mus-
lim perspective, these now distinct religions were once sim-
ply paganism and idolatry. Scholars have also created the ru-
diments of a technical vocabulary, in which the terms myth,
ritual, rite of passage, sacrifice, and perhaps symbol may be the
most widely successful terms. Other terms that were once
prominent, such as experience, numinous, sacred, and profane,
not to mention older creations like totem and taboo, now
seem characteristic of disputed or discarded positions. Since
the 1980s, however, studies have appeared that vigorously
seek to deconstruct these common categories, both in terms
of descriptive and conceptual inadequacy and political dis-
utility. Although these studies often present compelling anal-
yses, they have as yet had only a limited effect on actual lin-
guistic usage. Scholars now seem, however, to be abandoning
the term “myth.”Methods and theories. At the beginning of the twenty-
first century there is some consensus that the academic study
of religion is a polymethodic field. There is also some con-
sensus about some of the “approaches” or “perspectives” that
this field contains. Almost invariably mentioned, along with
other approaches, are history, psychology, sociology, and
comparative studies or phenomenology; the meaning of the
last term varies considerably. Although one might define
these approaches primarily in terms of problems and theo-
ries, in the way, for example, physicists and sociologists de-
lineate their fields, scholars of religions have generally begun
instead with the ideas of “great thinkers,” for example, Wil-
liam James (1842–1910), Sigmund Freud, and C. G. JungSTUDY OF RELIGION: AN OVERVIEW 8765