standing one another... .” Associated centers in Iran in-
clude the Institute for Dialogue among Religions in Tehran
and the Bureau for Knowledge and Religions at the Research
Center for Human Sciences and Cultural Studies. Since
2001, al-Azhar University has introduced an English-
language unit for Islamic studies, and Tashkent Islam Uni-
versity implemented a revised curriculum in the study of
world religions. This corresponds with the growing number
of Turkish and North African universities that have begun
to offer a curriculum aimed explicitly at participating in dia-
logue with non-Muslim societies.
Such initiatives should not be seen as novel undertak-
ings but rather represent a reinvigoration of the fertile indige-
nous tradition of the comparative study of religion from the
classical Islamic period.
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BRANNON WHEELER (2005)STUDY OF RELIGION: THE ACADEMIC STUDY
OF RELIGION IN NORTH AMERICA
North American intellectuals, poets, and scholars have
shown considerable enthusiasm in exploring religion dating
back to the nineteenth century. This spirit flourished in
scholarly, theological, philosophical, and artistic investiga-
tions.
THE EARLY ROOTS OF THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF RELIGION.
Academic study in the nineteenth century was often tied to
Christian theological interests and institutions, but this is not
to say that all religious study was simply apologetics. Early
scholars in the emerging field of North American compara-
tive religions included James Freeman Clark (Harvard Di-
vinity School), who published Ten Great Religions: An Essay
in Comparative Theology in 1871. Between the 1860s and
1900 several religiously oriented university chairs were ap-
pointed at places such as Harvard, Boston University,
Princeton, and Cornell—Clark’s appointment as “Professor
of Natural Religion and Christian Doctrine” at Harvard
being one example. Although these chairs did not represent
a full-fledged comparative religion such as was emerging in
Europe, they did portend a trend away from singly theologi-
cal reflections and apologetics. In addition to Clark, other
scholars included W. D. Whitney, James Freeman Clarke,
and George Foot Moore. In 1892 T. W. Rhys Davids, a Brit-
ish scholar of Buddhism, was invited to lecture at the newly
established “American Lectures on the History of Religions,”
a joint venture among several colleges and universities. In the
same year the University of Chicago established a depart-
ment devoted to the study of comparative religion.
Outside of universities, Ralph Waldo Emerson (and
other transcendentalists), Walt Whitman, and John Bur-
roughs represent just a few of the voices among amateur Ori-
entalists, philosophers, poets, and theologians interested in
religious experience, mysticism, religious psychology, and re-
ligious pluralism. On the level of popular culture, Chicago’s
World Parliament of Religions in 1893 offered a plurality of
different Christian congresses and lectures and introduced
many Americans to what became the earliest understandings
of Buddhist Therava ̄da and Zen as well as Hindu Veda ̄nta.
These events and thinkers held the common interest in reli-
gion and trust in “modern” scholarly methods to reveal the
origins, meanings, and truths of the myriad human behaviors
deemed religious.
These forces—as well as a plurality of religious groups
examining their own theology— created a diversity of ideas,8784 STUDY OF RELIGION: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF RELIGION IN NORTH AMERICA