Academic Study of Religion: Emerges in 1960s.

[Ron Price]

THAT OLD WORKHORSE 'RELIGION'



In the mid sixties I took an elective unit at university, while I was studying history and philosophy; it was in comparative religion. According to Carl Raschke in his article "Theorizing Religion at the turn of the Millennium," the study of religion only emerged as an academic field at universities in the late 1960s. After thirty years as an academic subject the field is now going through a crisis. Arising out of confessional and sectarian approaches to religion, out of comparativism and classical anthropology, out of the writings of Paul Tillich, Mircea Eliade and Clifford Geertz it was fuelled by the New Age movement and its curious contemporary syncretism. The study of religion has been a consortium of disparate intellectual agendas responding to an historically contingent set of market conditions. Now, Raschke states, after being sustained for all the years of my post-graduate life, 1967 to 2001, the academic study of religion cannot survive without sweeping changes. -Ron Price with thanks to Carl Raschke, Internet, 25 November 2001.



I got in early back then

as the study of religion

was finally respectable,

religious pluralism

at last a commitment,

but covert faith agendas

still competed with

scientific rigour.



Christianity was still

number one in this course,

as obvious as the nose on your face;

the guy who taught it

was a committed Christian

from the word go,

although he was a nice chap.



Deregulating the market,

opening up to global competition,

the praxis and exposure

to a varied theological espousal

got off the ground,

but you had to watch for

that hidden confessional curriculum.



Then, there was that sweeping

efflorescence of definition;

an undemarcated topography

requiring a whole new direction

for that old workhorse 'religion.'



Always there would be questions,

always an angst for meanings,

always a totality of experience,

the aura, the patina, the introspection,

always the need for redemption,

always a resurrection of memory,

always the mythic and the mystical.

always there would be the need for limits.



Ron Price

26 November 2001

 

[iBrian]

the academic study of religion cannot survive without sweeping changes.

Hm, this assertion doesn't explain *why* these changes are required. Religious and spiritual beliefs have certainly changed, and if current cert ed institutions are incapable of actually sitting down to study these changes, then indeed they must change. But if the impassioned observer remains impassioned, and observed the periods of change and belief as required, then what is there to change?

Sorry, there is nothing to get my teeth into here.

 

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,


futher, this represents a particuarly western view. academic study of religion was/is a required aspect of the Buddhist higher eduction process.

the writings of some of the abbots/deans of the university at Nalanda detail some of the cirriculum.. one of the classes was/is a comparative study of the various religious philosophies and theologies that were prevelant at the time.

the interested reader is directed to this link for more information about Nalanda:
http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/about/NalandaHeritage.html

 

[Ron Price]

First, I must apologize for not responding more quickly to the above comments on my original posting. Anyone who waits for 16 months to continue a dialogue is deserving of a reward for patience. Having just come across this thread in a casual surfing of the net, let me try and make a considered and useful response.

___________________________________________________________________

I think I first came across comparative religion at university in a particular book by Huston Smith entitled "The World's Religions." Evidently this book went on to sell more than 2 million copies. In his introduction Smith asks whether the dialogue between the religions sounds like bedlam or whether there has existed a blend of ideas into a strange etherial harmony. Smith went on to write "The Religions of Man"(1964). Many students of comparative religion in western universities in the last several decades began their academic studies with Huston Smith.

I did not follow Smith in the following decades as I went on to a host of other directions in life outside the academic study of religion. In fact I claim no special expertise in this subject, only a personal interest which has had time to fertilize now that I have retired from full-time employment. It would appear that Smith has become, according to one source, one of the grand old men of religious scholarship--at least in the West. And this grand old man may offer to us a way out of the crisis in the academic study of religion which I suggested 16 months ago in my original item on this thread.

This crisis, as I said then, has arisen "out of confessional and sectarian approaches to religion, out of comparativism and classical anthropology, out of the writings of Paul Tillich, Mircea Eliade and Clifford Geertz." It was fuelled, I went on to say, "by the New Age movement and its curious contemporary syncretism. The study of religion has seen a consortium of disparate intellectual agendas responding to an historically contingent set of market conditions."

I like Huston Smith and my offering here is purely suggestive as a possible centre point or focus in this field of the study of religion. I am, though, more conscious than I was at the start of this discussion, of the complexity of the issue. And so I rest my case--if indeed I have a case.-Ron Price, Tasmania.

 

[wil]

the academic study of religion cannot survive without sweeping changes.

I'm thinking I'm agreeing it isn't the study of religion that won't survive, religion as we know it won't survive w/o sweeping changes.

Iliminating the need for the intermediary, policing their own organizations for radicals, dissidents and power brokers, teaching that honking to get out of the parking lot after prayer or service is unnaceptable...

Declining attendance is not due to the masses not looking for answers...just not finding them.

namaste,

 

[Ron Price]

18 months ago, in mid-2004, I retired from part-time teaching; in mid-1999 I retired from full-time teaching after 30 years in the field and another 18 as a student. I am now 62 and happy to be able to devote my time to study. The academic study of religion is just one of the many fields that I now engage with.

I live in Australia and would like to make a brief comment or two about post-secondary education and the academic study of religion. There are, generally, two post-secondary forms of education in Australia: universities and technical and further education(tafe) institutions. I worked in the latter section for many years. It is here that the bulk of post-secondary students study. There is virtually no study of religion and little-to-no study of either philosophy or history in this sector.



Although this makes the picture seem bleak, the internet has opened a multitude of prospects for people to study religion privately. The internet has a technical history going back to the 1960s, to the same period that the adademic study of religion emerged. To give but one example of what the internet has contributed to the academic study of religion, I will quote a personal example. I have access to nearly forty journals on the internet, e-journals with full articles available to read on each of them. I have access to more printed matter for the academic study of religion than at any time in the past; any previous generation would have had to live near a very large library to have access to what I now have access to. The academic study of religion needs to be seen in a broad, a global context, to get an accurate, a comprehensive, picture of its progress, its decline, its complex development. This study has many facets, institutional and private.-Ron Price, Tasmania.