Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells
36â The study of religion in historical perspective
because of the innate superiority of theological thinking, but due to the corrosive influence of secularization on religious thought in general.
Tools of the trade
Over the past century or so, the study of religion has gradually acquired an extensive body of reference material for the use of students. The idea that it might be possible to bring together all the world’s knowledge and publish it in encyclopaedia form belongs to the Enlightenment. Today we are more modest, but the genre has survived. As far as religion is concerned, an important landmark was James Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1908–26); in German, there was Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1909–13), a fourth edition is currently in preparation. The Encyclopedia of Religion (16 vols, edited by Mircea Eliade) appeared in the US in 1987. Given the new situation created by the Internet, it is unlikely that there will be any more.
Compact dictionaries and handbooks are by now legion, as are ‘world religions’ textbooks for student use. Special mention may be made of The New Penguin Dictionary of Religions (1997) and The New Handbook of Living Religions (1998), both edited by John R. Hinnells. On the textbook front, Ninian Smart’s The World’s Religions (1989, an updated version of a book first published in 1969 as The Religious Experience of Mankind) has proved an excellent gradus ad parnassum for generations of religious studies students.
Concerning scholarly journals, we must be brief. They have never been other than variable in quality, and though these days every effort is made to guard professional standards, the level of readability is often depressingly low. There is the additional factor that the fragmentation of the study of religion in recent years has resulted in more and more specialist journals, which can only be read with profit by fellow specialists. Among the best ‘general’ journals in English are Religion (UK/US), Journal of the American Academy of Religion (US), Journal of Religion (US) and Numen (international).
Congresses, conferences, consultations
In 1993 there was celebrated the centenary of the Chicago ‘World’s Parliament of Religions’, though this time relabelled ‘Parliament of World Religions’ – a shift in meaning no one bothered to examine at all closely. Both were propaganda exercises, but for different causes: 1893 for religious oneness (monism), 1993 for religious diversity (pluralism). There would be little point in listing even a selection of the myriad conferences, congresses and consultations that have punctuated the years between, increasingly frequently since the advent of air travel in the 1960s. Opinions differ as to their importance, though it is probably true to say that the best are the smallest (the most satisfying conference I have ever attended numbered no more than thirty-five or so participants). It would however be churlish to deny their social function or the opportunity they provide for younger voices to make themselves heard among their peers.
The study of religion in historical perspectiveâ 37â
Bibliography
Boorstin, D. J., The Discoverers. New York, Vintage Books, 1983.
Capps, W. H., Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline. Minneapolis MN, Fortress Press, 1995. Cook, S. A., The Study of Religions. London, A. & C. Black, 1914.
Daniel, G., The Idea of Prehistory. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1964.
De Vries, J., The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach. trans. K. W. Bolle, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
Durkheim, É., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Trans. J. W. Swain, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1915.
Eliade, M. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion. 16 vols, New York, Macmillan, 1987.
Ellegård, A., Darwin and the General Reader. Göteborg (Gothenburg, Sweden), Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis 7, 1958.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Theories of Primitive Religion. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965.
Feldman, B. and Richardson, R. D., The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680–1860. Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press, 1972.
Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough. Abridged edn, London, Macmillan, 1922.
Freeman, D., Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth.
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983.
Hastings, J. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1908–1926. Heiler, F., Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion. Stuttgart, publisher unknown, 1961. Hinnells, J. R. (ed.), The New Penguin Dictionary of Religions. London, Penguin, 1997. ——Â(ed.), A New Handbook of Living Religions. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1998.
Hügel, F. von, The Mystical Element of Religion. 2 vols, London, Dent, 1908.
Hurd, W., New Universal History of the Religious Rites, Ceremonies and Customs of the Whole World. London, publisher unknown, 1788.
Inge, W. R., Christian Mysticism. London, Methuen, 1899.
James, W., The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols, New York, H. Holt & Co., 1890.
——Â The Varieties of Religious Experience. The Gifford Lectures 1901–2, reprinted Glasgow, Collins, 1977.
Jones, R. M., Studies in Mystical Religion. London, Macmillan & Co., 1909. Lang, A., Custom and Myth. London, Longmans & Co., 1884. ——ÂMyth, Ritual and Religion. 2 vols, London, Longmans & Co., 1887. ——ÂThe Making of Religion. London, Longmans & Co., 1898.
Leeuw, G. van der, Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology. Trans. J. E. Turner, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1938.
Marett, R. R., The Threshold of Religion. London, Methuen, 1909. Mead, M., Coming of Age in Samoa. New York, Morrow, 1928.
Müller, M. F., Introduction to the Science of Religion. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1873. Nisbet, R. A., Émile Durkheim. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy. Trans. J. W. Harvey, London, Humphrey Milford, 1923. Pratt, J. B., The Religious Consciousness: A Psychological Study. New York, Macmillan, 1920.
Schiele, F. M. (ed.), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 5 vols, Tübingen, publisher unknown, 1909–13.
Schleiermacher, F., On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Trans. John Oman, London, publisher unknown, 1893.
Schmidt, W., The Origin and Growth of Religion: Facts and Theories. London, Methuen, 1931. Sharpe, E. J., Understanding Religion. London, Duckworth, 1983.
——ÂComparative Religion: A History. London, Duckworth, 1975. Second edition, London, Duckworth, and La Salle, Open Court, 1986.
Smart, N., The World’s Religions. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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Smith, H., The Religions of Man. New York, Harper & Row, 1964.
Spencer, H., First Principles. London, Williams & Norgate, 1862.
——ÂEssays: Scientific, Political and Speculative. 3 vols, London, Williams & Norgate, 1901.
Starbuck, E. D., The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Study of the Growth of Religious Consciousness. London, Scott, 1899.
Trompf, G. W., In Search of Origins. London, Oriental University Press, 1990.
Underhill, E., Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. 13th edn, London, Methuen, 1940.
Waardenburg, J., Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and Theories of Research. 2 vols, The Hague and Paris, Mouton, 1973–4.
White, A. D., A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. 2 vols, London, Arco, 1955.
Chapter 3
The study of religions: the last 50 years
Gregory Alles
In one sense, the study of religions is as old as religion itself, or at least as the first human beings who looked at their neighbours or themselves and wondered what they were doing when they did what we have come to call religion. In another sense, in most parts of the world the study of religions in a narrower, more technical sense, as the non-theological study of religion in the context of higher education, did not begin in earnest until after the Second World War. In the same period, the academic study of religions expanded greatly in Europe, which already had firm if small traditions of such study. In those parts of the world that had traditions of teaching theology, such as North America and colonial Africa, the development of the study of religions was largely a shift in emphasis from examining the world through a lens shaped by religious conviction to examining it through one shaped by perspectival pluralism, religious uncertainty, or anti-religious naturalism, usually an uneven mixture of all three. The shift rarely satisfied everyone. In other parts of the world, such as East Asia, it involved building an academic enterprise around an imported foreign category, ‘religion’.
Although the expansion and internationalization of the study of religions began in earnest after the Second World War, an exact starting point is impossible to determine. As the preceding chapter demonstrates, the academic study of religions had a long prehistory and history in Europe, and the global move to study religions academically had neither a single founder nor a founding moment. Nevertheless, it is clear that as Europe and Japan rebuilt, as Europe gradually divested itself of its colonies, as much of the rest of the world tried its hand at self-government, and as the Cold War divided up the world between two and later three great powers vying for influence, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, universities and colleges in many parts of the world instituted programmes for the study of religions.
From the point of view of history, it is just becoming possible to assess the earliest of these events. Their lasting significance – the significance that makes people in later periods want to remember them and transmit them to succeeding generations as history – will not be apparent until those later periods come into being. At the same time, one should not ignore them, even if it is tempting for older generations to dismiss some developments as retrograde. They are the movements that shape the study of religions today.
The study of religion in context
There were probably many reasons for the expansion and internationalization of religious studies after the Second World War. Some of them were truly global in scope.
40â The study of religions: the last 50 years
One reason was the vast expansion of both the world’s population and of tertiary education. In 1900 the world’s population was 1.65 billion (109). In 1950 it was 2.5 billion; by 1999 it was almost 6 billion. With all other factors constant, the number of scholars studying religions worldwide should have increased four-fold during the course of the twentieth century, most of the growth taking place after the Second World War. Other factors did not, however, remain constant. After the Second World War, countries in Europe and the European diaspora generally shifted from elite to mass universities, giving a much higher percentage of their populations access to higher education and employment within it. Furthermore, in both the de-colonizing world and in nations attempting to demonstrate the viability of an alternative political ideology, such as the People’s Republic of China, the establishment and promotion of tertiary educational institutions allowed governments to stake claims to quality. A government that fostered a system of universities and colleges deserved loyalty and respect. Under such conditions even a field of study that loses a moderate amount of market share will actually expand (cf. Frank and Gabler 2006).
Such statistics alone do not, however, explain the expansion and internationalization of the study of religions after the Second World War. Significant global technological and cultural developments probably played a role, too. Among them one might mention infrastructural factors such as the introduction in the late 1950s of commercial jet aircraft
– the de Havilland Comet 4 and the more successful Boeing 707 in October 1958, the Douglas DC–8 in September 1959; and the launch of communication satellites – Sputnik 1 in October 1957, Project SCORE in December 1958, Telstar in July 1962. Commercial jet air transportation gave increasing numbers of people, including scholars, ready access to more distant parts of the world. Satellites enabled the transmission of higher volumes of auditory and visual communication throughout much of the world. Both had the effect of stimulating curiosity about places elsewhere, creating demand for knowledge about religions, among other topics, and providing affordable means to meet that demand. At least in some people, they also had the effect of undercutting older, locally defined loyalties, including assertions of exclusive claims to religious Truth associated with traditional approaches to theology.1 For the pluralists, the space programmes of the 1960s and early 1970s, especially images of the earth from space, such as the earth rising over the moon shot from Apollo 8 in 1968 and the whole-earth view shot from Apollo 17 in 1972, provided visual icons. There is also some evidence that the events of the Holocaust and the Second World War themselves made parochial definitions of Truth seem more untenable within an academic context (Frank and Gabler 2006: 67).
In addition to global factors, local factors probably also contributed to an expansion in the volume of the study of religions as well as to a shift in its emphases in various parts of the world. For example, in the 1950s, during the Cold War against godless Communism, religiosity and, in some circles, religious plurality became markers of identity for the United States. (Significantly, the study of religions had very different trajectories in nations under the influence of the Soviet Union.) In 1963 the US Supreme Court noted in a ruling that although government institutions could not teach students to be religious, they could and probably should teach students about religions (School District of Abington v. Schempp 374 US 225 [1963]). As the Vietnam War and public opposition to it intensified, interest in Asian religions grew, because the experience of the war and its aftermath provided more intimate contact with what often seemed strange religions; consider the impact of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation on June 11, 1963. That interest also grew because religions like Buddhism and Hinduism could be promoted as alternatives to a seemingly stifling and