On making peace: a critical reply to Luther H. Martin and Donald Wiebe

Abstract

I have been asked to respond to Luther Martin's and Donald Wiebe's article On Declaring WAR: A Critical Comment. Most of their discussion concerns Ninian Smart who has provided his own response to their criticisms. I shall therefore restrict my reply to their comments on my review of Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in the Study of Religion (MTSR 3/1 [1991]: 142-146). But I shall also include some of my own reflections on Ninian Smart's proposal of a World Academy of Religion, primarily under attack, because he has written on this idea in the book Turning Points in Religious Studies (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990) which I edited and to which Luther Martin and Don Wiebe referred towards the end of their article. The reader needs to know that, meanwhile, Donald Wiebe has also published a review of this book in the journal Religion where, in a longish paragraph, he already argues against the idea of such an academy to which he has given the acronym WAR.1 Professor Smart and I have written a reply to this review which will appear in another issue of Religion. Thus my remarks, following here, are already part of an ongoing debate which—by the time this article is printed—may have developed even further through discussions at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting in San Francisco in November 1992. This by way of introduction to explain the background from which I am writing. Now to my reply. First I must comment on the chosen title On Declaring WAR. This seems to me to express a deliberately confrontational, perhaps even