good number of spiritual seekers. Since the late 1980s these factors, together
with a growing awareness of the importance of religion for world affairs, have
led at many places to a tremendous increase in the number of students.
Not all universities have increased the number of staff in response. In
Germany, Switzerland and Austria departments of religious studies rarely have
more than one or two full-time positions, resulting in excessive work-loads.
At several German universities students in religious studies now outnumber
students in theology; theologians on the faculty, however, often outnumber
scholars of religion by more than 10 to 1. The allocation of resources for the
non-confessional study of religion often reflects theology’s struggle for academic
survival (Platvoet 1998: 344–345). In Sweden, the financial crisis of Faculties
of Theology at Uppsala and Lund resulted in a decrease in professorships in
the general study of religion, even though that study had attracted the majority
of students to these Faculties. In Germany some theologians have tried to
reinvent theology as science of religion. Similar developments have occurred
in Great Britain (Cox and Sutcliffe 2006: 25). At many places on the continent
where theology is established at state universities the relationship between
theology and Religionswissenschaftis a standard topic in identificatory
scholarly literature (e.g. Edsman 1974; Colpe 1980; Antes 1996; Jensen,
Widmann, and Geertz [eds] 1996; Hjelde 1998; Löhr [ed.] 2000; Figl 2003:
51–54; Kippenberg 2003; Cox 2006: 215–218).
At the IAHR conference in Marburg in 1960 the study of religion seems to
have emphatically separated itself from religious and theological agendas. In
reaction to a keynote lecture by then IAHR general secretary Claas Jouco
Bleeker (1960), R. J. Zwi Werblowsky drafted a manifesto defining five ‘basic
minimum presuppositionsfor the pursuit of our studies’ (Schimmel 1960: 235).
The second begins: ‘Religionswissenschaft understands itself as a branch of
the Humanities. It is an anthropological discipline, studying the religious
phenomenon as a creation, feature and aspect of human culture’ (Schimmel
1960: 236). Although the statement was not included in the official congress
report, a number of prominent scholars in the field, including Bianchi, Brandon,
Brelich, Eliade, Lanternari, and Simon, allowed their names to be associated
with ‘the general tenor’ of the statement (Schimmel 1960: 235).Changing religious background of the scholarsUp until the 1970s and 1980s the majority of scholars of religion, even in its
non-confessional variety, were committed Christians, even though they
sometimes stood outside the religious mainstream. Prominent examples include
Otto’s liberal mystic religiosity and his Religiöser Menschheitsbund (Religious
League of Humanity)(Alles 1991, Obergethmann 1998) and the ecumenical
and religious activities of Friedrich Heiler (1892–1967) (Waardenburg 1992).
James Cox has recently reminded us of the African, missionary, and colonial26
MICHAEL STAUSBERG