an introduction
away from the quest for the origins of religion. Lang was critical of the
evolutionary religion theorists, believing they lacked reliable evidence
and historical testimony, promoting a more critical and skeptical approach
to religion. Lang’s scholarship did not deter theorists such as Lucien
Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939), who compared primitive mentality unfavor-
ably to scientific thinking, and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), who traced
the origins of religion from ancestor worship to higher forms of religion,
in part to indicate primitive notions in Christianity with its belief in the
Holy Ghost and funeral customs. Although the application of the evolu-
tionary scheme to religion would wane, the emphasis on the scientific
approach to the study of religion would continue to be a goal for later
scholars.
the quest fOr a science Of religiOn
The call for a science of religion was answered by two Dutch scholars:
Cornelis P. Tiele (1830–1902) and Pierre D. Chantepie de la Saussaye
(1848–1920). Tiele wanted to break out of the hermeneutical circle by
developing a science of religion that included the deductive method to
analyze all the data. He then applied a two-stage morphological descrip-
tion, as used by botanists and biologists, with the aim of identifying the
essence or source of religion and the ontological study of the permanent
elements in religion. Tiele’s science of religion investigated a plethora of
facts that invited classification, inference, comparison, and understand-
ing. From the context of an objective position, the mind of a scientific
scholar was able to unite the religious facts and distinguish the forms of
religion from religion itself. Tiele’s universal approach to the study of
religion was shaped by the philosophy of the German thinker G. W. F.
Hegel (1770–1831) and his phenomenology.
Manifesting a different type of universalism from Tiele, Chantepie de
la Saussaye presupposed that in all religions there was a fundamental
unity. This unity could be discerned by the method of phenomenology,
which consisted in describing, sorting, classifying, and comparing the
perceptually manifest components of religion that he thought negated the
need to find the origin or essence of religion. The phenomenological
method was associated with a philosophy of religion and a historical
perspective. The former enabled a scholar to find the manifestations of
religion, whereas the latter determined the essence of religion with the
assistance of ethnography.