Critical Humanism and the Study of Religion: A Statement and Defense

Abstract

Abstract This essay offers a statement and defense of four core claims of my work, Why Study Religion? Those are: (1) the field of religious studies is preoccupied by procedural methods for studying religion to the neglect of values and purposes that can justify its intellectual practices; (2) this preoccupation operates under a “regime of truth” that is anti-normative; (3) this regime of truth buckles under the pressure of repressed values and smuggles in crypto-normative judgments and commitments; and (4) this preoccupation with method can be remedied by attending to purposes that can justify the study of religion, which I call Critical Humanism. Critical Humanism aims to expand the moral imagination and comprises four values: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. After describing the book’s main claims, I take up critiques expressed by Michael Stausberg, et al. in their essay, “A Normative Turn in Religious Studies?”