What Is It That We Call 'Religion'? Analyzing the Epistemological Status of the Sacred as a Scholarly Category in Comparative Religion

Abstract

The category of the sacred has been used in the scholarly vocabulary of comparative religion as a referent to the transcendent worlds which religious behavior is directed to. The methodological value of the sacred as a scholarly concept has, however, been generally con sidered more descriptive than analytical.' The historians of religion have been content to consider the sacred as a designation for the transcendent reality which becomes manifest in the world of human societies in variegated forms of religious experiences and expressions within the institutional or non-institutional settings. From the per spective of phenomenology of religion the recurring patterns of the sacred receive their social grounding in mythical narratives and in ritual systems of representation, which in turn create conditions for religious discourses and emotional responses within the cultural sys tems of symbols in question.2 During the last fifteen years there has emerged a new interest among scholars of religion to reflect and assess the value of the sacred as a scholarly concept—most notably by W. Richard Comstock, Hans H. Penner, Carsten Colpe, William E. Paden and Carol E. Burnside.3 However, as Penner has emphasized, no one has managed to set the sacred in a wider theoretical context (1989: 24). Besides the culture-specific accounts of linguists and anthropologists, Comstock and Paden are perhaps the only scholars whose discussion on the