religious studies

Over fifty years ago Bellah rocked the field of religious studies with a pioneering study on Japanese religion. When he died suddenly this past week he was working on a book that was set to land him as a pioneer yet again.

Ah, the fantasy of “secure borders.” For millennia, economic pressures have forced people to move toward more prosperous lands. Nothing has ever stopped that flow, and nothing ever will.

Something is deeply wrong when the burden remains exclusively on the community itself to conduct all of the outreach, to articulate its values and defend its contributions to the rest of society. Should the educational burden be entirely on the community? There is a deep isolation, not to mention exhaustion, in that “cultural tax”—especially after a tragedy. Do we as Americans simply leave the community to articulate itself to its neighbors? Do we ask them to teach us at the same time as they are burying their dead? Or are there ways that fellow travelers can participate in the educational process?

As scholar Scott Kugle knows well, to be both Muslim and gay means the possibility of having to “come out twice”—with the likely chance of encountering either homophobia or Islamophobia (or both), depending on the context.

The first time I went to the American Academy of Religion conference it really got my hopes up. This was the fall of 2006 and, with only a summer in between, I’d just finished college and begun my first year of a PhD program in religious studies…

I lie a lot on airplanes. Not in any way that should upset the TSA or anything like that—just to the question “What do you do?” I don’t like admitting to strangers what it is I do. I’m a Ph.D. student…

For Jeff Sharlet, the weird is out there: lost in the Wild West; hidden behind suburban fences and Hell Houses; on scratchy 1920s blues recordings and Mennonite funerals. His rare gift has been to make friends with the weird and almost make peace with it—which doesn’t mean he’s not skeptical.

Most Sundays I don’t go to church because, frankly put, it bores me; I am tired and church fails to provide any compelling reason to get out of my pajamas. (Were I living in a large, cosmopolitan city where churches with high liturgy, weekly Eucharist, beautiful architecture, and trained musicians abounded, my story might be quite different.) Although I like the people at church very much and I wish to support them in their hours of need, I am still unwilling to prioritize membership. I have an emotionally demanding job that takes up all of my time and psychic energy during the academic year, and I would honestly rather get work done in my off hours than act as an usher or sit on a church governing body.

The premise that Religious Studies was a weak blend of esotericism and elitism prior to recent years—but is reviving through putting all that in the past—is wrong on factual grounds. More perniciously, if this analysis informs institutional strategies in an era of downsizing, it could be downright dangerous for the future of the discipline.

In which we take the long view, considering the place of religion in the twenty-first century so far. What stands out is our confusion—about religion, about the secular sphere, and about the future of both as embodying forms of political commitment capable of peaceable coexistence.