The Study of Religion in the University: Beyond Scientific and Humanistic Approaches

Abstract

This essay considers an exchange between ‘‘new secular’’ theologians in the US and a Canadian proponent of the scientific study of religion, about humanistic and scientific values in the academic study of religion, in relation to the character of contemporary universities and the scope of the humanities. It suggests that the humanistic study of religion is culturally normal in North American higher education and educationally important, but is limited as a program for the study of religion as social reality. The essay argues that systematic, integrated study of religions, incorporating contemporary knowledge about human behavior, is necessary for understanding actions of religious people in social and historical circumstances. To this end it proposes an integrated causal model, drawing on Michael Pye’s concept of Religionswissenschaft and Talcott Parsons’s general action theory.