Discipline Of Religious Studies Research Articles

The Scandal of Particularity

The Scandal of Particularity Randi Rashkover Knowledge is always about power in one way or another. Politicians, theologians, philosophers, and social theorists have realized this for a long time. We must, Spinoza told us, be wary of ecclesiastical efforts to control belief. Kant distinguished between an ethics rooted in an object we want and a practical knowledge driven by a law “free” from interest. Weber taught us about instrumental knowledge that worked to achieve sought‐for ends. Habermas enlightened us to a different sort of knowledge that placed “understanding” over acquisition as its goal but even so, sustained a vision of what constituted “right” knowledge and designated the line drawn to siphon off falsehood. Of course we cannot mention a connection between knowledge and power and not invoke Marx, who taught us that knowledge is not only about acquiring power but about sustaining it as well. The exposure of power as a factor in knowledge about religion has become a frequently noted phenomenon. The study of religion is not an innocent affair. According to Robert Orsi “[t]he discipline of Religious Studies has always been organized around a distinct and identifiable set of moral values and judgments. The usually unacknowledged centrality of the values in the working life of the discipline has limited the range of human practices, needs and responses that count as religion.”1 Along the same lines, Talal Asad’s challenge to Clifford Geertz’s definitional approach to religion reminds us that to define is to control. It is to delimit or assert a power over and against the phenomenon one claims to be able to name. No doubt, Geertz saw much of his work as an effort to protect religion from the encroachment of the secular but Geertz’s implicit heroism registered as an exercise in intellectual coercion and order‐making, here again excising out what remained unruly, contingent, mysterious, and unknowable. Orsi and Asad’s insights in‐hand, scholars of religion now work to expose what were hidden and sometimes repressed impulses toward containment. This work further illuminated how the effort to contain and control knowledge undermines the very desire for power driving this approach since control is a response to fear or loss—a testimony to powerlessness and the very opposite of authentic power and freedom. If one applies these considerations to the question of how Jews may know about Christianity and how Christians may know about Judaism, we meet with an extraordinary situation because historically speaking, Jewish–Christian relations did not arise from an effort by either party to retain a status quo. Rather, these relations arose from a dramatically different context of chaos and confusion. The Holocaust left Jews and Christians bereft of power, bereft of the ability to contain and control knowledge not only of the other but of themselves as well. Jewish–Christian Studies emerged within and not outside of the Fackenheimian shadow that demanded a full coming to terms with the suffering of the victims in the Holocaust prior to a retrieval of any piece of Christianity or Judaism. Incapable of naming the event and its players, post‐Holocaust Jewish and Christian thought did not lapse into a kenotic undoing. Denuded of power, both traditions sat amidst the confusion of variables, the confusion of positions, the confusion of questions and lost answers. A bombed‐out city of broken ideas and shattered foundations, the Sitz im Leben of post‐Holocaust Jewish–Christian reflection meant a mandated survey of the rubble. Much of what was found was distorted. We may recall the now famous “Mauriac Foreward”2 to Eli Wiesel’s Night with its “What did I say to him? Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him—the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world?”3 and the shadow of confusion it cast upon our understanding of that book. We may also recall Richard Rubenstein’s interview with Dr. Heinrich Gruber during which Gruber, a man Rubenstein described as “devoted to the work of healing and reconciliation,”4 nonetheless proclaimed to Rubenstein during the interview that “the problem in Germany is that the Jews have not learned anything from what happened to them…I...

The "So-Called History" of the Study of Religion

While it is the case that Christian values and priorities (in particular, Protestant Christian ones) were fundamental in the making of the modern discipline of religious studies, scholars of religion have struggled within and against this inheritance over the past two centuries in their work of understanding other religions. Western religious scholarship developed in a worldwide circulation of comparisons and commentaries that even within discrepancies imperial power included interlocutors from elsewhere. Nor was the West itself singular. Religious studies practitioners today inherit a polyvalent tradition of scholarship that offers rich theoretical possibilities amid its ironies.

Religious Studies and its Relationship with Theology: A Spatial Analysis

Academic disciplines can be understood as tribes with their own territories (Becher 1989) which are protected from outsiders and invested with power and meaning for those within. The language which scholars use to delineate and distinguish them from one another is replete with spatial metaphor and the language of war and struggle. References to inside/outside, inclusion/exclusion, to boundaries, incursions, incorporation, integration and embrace are frequently made, particularly when scholars write about their own discipline in relation to others. In this article I offer a spatial analysis of discourse about the discipline of religious studies and its relationship to theology. I note the importance in such discourse of the container schema (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) for depicting possible disciplinary relationships and various perspectives on ‘religion’ as an object of study. A spatial approach offers a clear visual depiction of the views of selected scholars of religion on the relationship of religious studies to theology, whilst also revealing some of the power strategies at work in disciplinary construction. Keywords: Religious studies, Theology, spatial language, academic disciplines

E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Aesthetics (review)

Reviewed by: E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Aesthetics Elizabeth Kramer E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Aesthetics. By Abigail Chantler. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [xii, 202 p. ISBN 0-754-60706-2. $89.95.] Music examples, bibliography, index. Given the fact that E. T. A. Hoffmann's writings have proved pivotal to discussions of music—musical listening, the idea of absolute music, the reception of church music, and above all, the music of Beethoven —readers may be surprised to learn that English-language music scholarship has lacked a book-length study of the musical thought of Hoffmann. Abigail Chantler's new account, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Aesthetics, puts forth a vision of Hoffmann's far-reaching significance that considers his writings and musical compositions and that is informed by over a century of previous [End Page 833] scholarship on Hoffmann. Readers of German will recognize the influence of contributions by individuals such as Georg Ellinger (E. T. A. Hoffmann: sein Leben und seine Werke [Hamburg: L. Voss, 1894]), Peter Schnaus (E. T. A. Hoffmann als Beethoven-Rezensent der Allgemeine Musikalischen Zeitung [Munich: Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, 1977]), and Gerhard Kaiser (E. T. A. Hoffmann [Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1988]). Others will note the shadow of David Charlton and Martyn Clarke's invaluable annotated translations (E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke [New York: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989]). Early Romanticism—a movement of ambiguity and ever-widening circles of thought—pervades every aspect of Chantler's account of Hoffmann's aesthetics. Introducing Hoffmann as a "polymath with eclectic interests" (p. vii), Chantler emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of her endeavor and draws on perspectives from the disciplines of religious studies, literature, music, and German history. The result is a fluid interchange of Hoffmann's ideas and those of his time, presented through a large selection of primary and secondary sources. Chantler's first chapter, "Art Religion," acknowledges the wide-reaching nature of spiritual imagery in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century aesthetics. The permeation of ideas such as "spirituality," "divinity," and "religion" in literature of the time has been tied to contemporaneous phenomena of platonic idealism (by Mark Evan Bonds and John Neubauer) and romantic expressivism (by M. H. Abrams and Charles Taylor). For her exposition of spirituality in writings of the early nineteenth century, Chantler chooses the formulation of Carl Dahlhaus (Die Idee der absoluten Musik [Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1978]), who in his account of absolute music draws attention to a Kunstreligion or "art religion" that he cursorily traces as emerging from the writings of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Schleiermacher, G. W. F. Hegel, and Hoffmann. Chantler's general survey—perfectly appropriate given her purposes—of spiritual ideas at the time does not address the larger conceptual issues circling around the idea of an "art religion," but it does introduce the reader to Schleiermacher's aesthetics and a diverse body of writings about genius. In particular, she draws the reader's attention to descriptions of genius as both active and passive in the writings of Wackenroder, C. F. Michaelis, and Hoffmann, an often neglected paradox that returns in her later arguments about Hoffmann's poetic language and hermeneutics. Chapter 2, "Hoffmann's Romantic Poetry," highlights elements of early romantic thought in Hoffmann's fiction. The exploration of literary techniques such as the arabesque, authorial ambiguity, the fragment, and irony guides her consideration of Hoffmann's Kreisleriana and The Golden Pot, especially as they reflect the "self-detachment" of the author "facilitating the self-cultivation of the reader" (p. 45). Specific consideration of the musical subject matter of Kreisleriana in light of romantic literary techniques is conspicuously absent, and in this respect, Chantler's account differs markedly from Daniel Chua's reading of romantic instrumental music as portrayed as "absolute fragment" (Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 177) in Hoffmann's writings. Elements of self-detachment and active interpretation discussed here are loosely related to references to active and passive genius in chapter 1 and reappear as Chantler addresses Hoffmann's review of Beethoven...

Roundtable Discussion: Must i be Womanist?: Must i be Womanist?

Must I Be Womanist? Monica A. Coleman (bio) Early Influences: Black Feminist and Womanist I'm a black female religious scholar, but I'm not sure I'm a womanist. I was a black feminist before I heard of "womanist." I discovered black feminists in college when studying the black arts movements of the 1970s. I identified black feminism with the 1970s—black power, poetry, literature, and defiance. In my eyes, black feminists were radical, fire-eating, justice-loving, law-defying women. Later in my college career, I came to the term womanist through literature. While writing a paper on Their Eyes Were Watching God, I read Alice Walker's essays about recovering Zora Neale Hurston. I appreciated and related to Walker's quest for a role model: "I write all the things I should have been able to read."1 I later learned of the womanist movement in religious scholarship. While looking for religious themes in black women's writings, I came across Katie G. Cannon's Black Womanist Ethics (1988).2 It was the first time I read about black women's literature from the perspective of a religious scholar. As a result of Cannon's work and that of other womanists, I never once doubted that I could have a place in religious scholarship. I never felt the pain that no one was talking about my experience, my literature, or my role models. I know that the first [End Page 85] generation of womanist religious scholars worked hard to create a world where a young woman could have this kind of experience. They gave me the experience they wanted to have; the experience they should have been able to have. For this, I am grateful beyond words, and I think of them as my godmothers. They mothered me into the academic study of God. As I have met the women whose work I read, I know them as more than writers and scholars. They are passionate people of faith, dedicated teachers, gentle and encouraging mentors, and weary but joyful trailblazers. I can't imagine what kind of scholar I would be, what kind of woman I would be, if I had not encountered Walker, Cannon, and Renita Weems, and encountered them before William Faulkner, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Walter Brueggemann. I tell these stories as more than personal narrative. I believe that I am one of a number of black female scholars who do not know the world or the discipline of religious studies without the influence of feminist and womanist religious scholarship. I question my identity as womanist because I've also been shaped by black feminists, and I believe that I'm part of a generation of women who have grown up (intellectually) during a time that takes womanism as a given. Not a Womanist: Critiques and Black Feminist Leanings I'm not sure I'm a womanist. In her definition, Walker describes womanist as "a black feminist or feminist of color."3 But I've long sensed a difference between the two—or at least in the way the two movements have developed. There are those who identify specifically as "womanist": Cannon, Delores Williams, Emilie Townes, and Jacquelyn Grant. And there are some people who call themselves "black feminist" but not "womanist": Angela Davis, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Barbara Smith. I haven't been able to put my finger on the precise nature of this difference, but I have some intimations. When I read Walker's definition, I feel at home, but the trajectory of womanist religious scholarship has left me in a house without enough furniture. There are not enough chairs, couches, or beds for me or many of the black women I know and love. It isn't a place where we can be who we are in some of the most important ways we live—sexually, spiritually, or politically. I've been dissatisfied by the heteronormativity of womanist religious scholarship. Walker clearly states that a womanist "loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually." I think it no coincidence that Walker references sexual love before nonsexual love, and that this phrase falls before her reference to loving men. Walker...

The Discipline and Its Other: The Dialectic of Alterity in the Study of Religion

The academic study of religion emerges, in part at least, from an encounter with the religious Other. This essay traces out a history of this encounter, a history that is dialectical. In each historic moment, the simple dichotomy that was previously thought to ground a hard and facile distinction between self and other comes to be challenged. But in the wake of such challenges, new categories come to be posited, categories on the basis of which the Self can (once again) emerge not simply as different from, but also as superior to the Other. This process - this dialectic of alterity - is as operative today in the discipline of religious studies as it was in the discipline's antecedents. We consider some of the core concepts around which the identity of the discipline is constructed in the present moment: the categories that allow for the differentiation of the discipline from its Other(s), and for its emergence in a position of superiority vis a vis its Other(s). The essay concludes by identifying four recent developments that are challenging a notion of the discipline constructed in these terms.

Incarnational Immersion-Based Learning in Cultural Contexts: A Charity Model

The Religious Pastoral Studies and Behavioral Sciences Departments of a Midwestern college have collaborated in offering academic courses in theology and anthropology that include service immersion experiences with people of diverse cultures in South Dakota, North Carolina, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Honduras. This paper explores the incarnational dimension of immersion experiences between native peoples and college students. Using a contextual theology model, students and faculty from various social science and religious studies disciplines reflect with native people on the historical and contemporary elements of their culture and spirituality. This paper discusses the historical development of the immersion courses, methodology, curriculum design, student learning objectives and outcomes, incarnational value formation in Sisters of Charity charisms, and future directions.

Learning with JFSR

Learning with JFSR Margaret M. Gower (bio) For my part in the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, I have been asked to offer critical reflection on my experience of learning with the journal. I am particularly happy to do this because, in the course of my first year in the Master of Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School, JFSR has come to be a source of inspiration, agitation, and regular reference. Even though I came to divinity school as a self-identified feminist and a graduate of a wo/men's college, I have been energized and radicalized by the vibrant and unapologetic feminism that I have encountered in my coursework here and as a reader of JFSR. The journal has guided me to see and to be willing to speak words of challenge to kyriarchal systems in two main ways. First, through JFSR I have come to understand more fully the animating conviction of feminist studies in religion, namely, that activism and the academy can be made to work together in constructive synergy. This is a conviction held in common by contributors to the journal, who speak from a wide range of social locations, academic disciplines, belief systems, and feminist visions. The first course I took with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza was the inaugural offering of a class on the contexts and methods for thinking about and constructing feminist theologies. Following a radical democratic teaching method, we students chose our own reading assignments, and about one-third of our options were selections from JFSR. That number is a testimony to the range of perspectives represented as well as to the diverse theological claims made in [End Page 114] the journal's corpus, often in a single roundtable discussion. Borrowing a term from Patricia Martinez, I have come to think of some contributions to JFSR as making up an intellectual rojak, Malay for a spicy mixed salad. 1 I take the many and continually increasing diversities of the contributors, who are all nonetheless committed to JFSR 's role at the intersection of feminist theory and religion, as evidence of the power of the journal's dual embrace of scholarship and activism. In a moment in which inauthentic notions of feminism have, on the one hand, dissolved into so-called cheerleader feminism and, on the other hand, resulted in what María Pilar Aquino has called "a tendency to confine [feminism] to matters of argumentation—as if it were a self-subsistent discourse, with no connection whatsoever with geoeconomic and geopolitical developments" and hence resulting in intense intellectual fragmentation among wo/men, JFSR has resisted both poles. 2 Rather, it has found balance by publishing rigorous thinking by a diverse group of contributors whose articles regularly reflect dissent and disagreement. However, their discourse is constructive, rather than fragmenting, because it falls within the parameters of theorizing toward the shared vision of a reconstructed approach to the discipline of religious studies and a feminist transformation of religious and cultural institutions. The second way that my reading JFSR has enabled me to participate in the dialogical encounters that it records is by the insistence of its many contributors that their readers appreciate the nature of knowledge itself as a constructed phenomenon. In reading JFSR, I have been struck not just by this insistence that knowledge is constructed and therefore can be reconstructed but also by the self-conscious vision of the journal as participating in the creation of feminist knowledge. Insofar as publishing represents a public exchange of ideas, the journal serves as a vehicle for the construction of feminist knowledge in the public arena. The twenty-plus volumes of JFSR give form to feminist knowledge, constructed in a particularly feminist way. The journal challenges readers to rethink so-called master narratives, but it offers no final resolution to the conflicts and tensions that arise out of the entangled interactions found within its pages. Thus, even as the journal can be taken as a coherent record of the past twenty years of feminist thought in religion, the editors of JFSR have resisted making certain voices canonical over others, a principle made concrete through such...

Turkish Alevi Poetry in the Twentieth Century: The Fusion of Political and Religious Identities

This article examines Turkish poetry in the twentieth century focusing on how the community integrates political issues within a traditionally religious genre. The figure of Kemal Ataturk, the state ideology of Kemalism, and the acts of violence the community have experienced under the Republic are recurring themes in this poetry. A contextual interpretation of poems contradicts our commonsense understanding of the supposedly distinct categories of religion and politics. The worldview does not operate with notions of sacred versus profane and indeed challenges our conception of religion and politics as distinct categories. The case provides us with a fascinating example of how we are caught in our terminological categories when we ignore the worldview of our subjects. ********** [R]eligious studies as a cognitive discipline may actually distort or reduce that which it is claiming to investigate. As an example of this we shall consider the possibility that the secular framework upon which the modern discipline of religious studies is founded may actually subordinate religious phenomena and emic explanations of it to a secular meta-discourse. (Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, 42f.) Entering spaces, such as association buildings, private living rooms, or cemevis, (1) one is very often confronted by a surprising visual arrangement: the portraits of the two saints, Ali and Haci Bektas, accompanied by that of Kemal Ataturk, the founding father and first president of the Turkish Republic, whose picture is almost omnipresent in Turkey. (2) Ataturk is commonly understood as a symbol for the state ideology of Kemalism, especially its key republican and secularist principles. Some Alevis, however, not only strongly uphold these republican and secularist principles, but also give them a religious meaning. These Alevis honor Ataturk as a saint, and also embed laicism and certain themes of republican history into their religious narrative. About twenty percent of Turkish citizens are estimated to be of Alevi background. (3) The label Alevism, referring to the veneration of the first Shiite Imam Ali, became popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was applied to a number of regional socio-religious communities with similar beliefs, rituals, and social structures. (4) The aim of the present paper is to investigate the fusion of religious and political identities of Alevism by examining religious poems of the twentieth century. Poetry is the medium in which this fusion is the most apparent. The medium of the poem offers a distinct voice that--through the use of the stylistic devices of metaphors and analogies--allows the formulation of positions not necessarily expressible in prose. I will look at the ways political issues are framed in these poems. Categorized according to topics, the given examples of poetry will illustrate the embedding of a variety of political themes in religious contexts. To provide the background of the poems, it will first be necessary to outline some basic information about beliefs and history, as well as the role and the place of poetical tradition in Alevism. On a theoretical level, the goal here is to offer a sufficient explanation for the incorporation of political symbols and incidents into the religious narrative of Alevism. I will argue that the phenomenon has to be understood in the context of the societal developments of the twentieth century and the interpretation of these developments. However, I do not consider the historical approach alone as a sufficient explanation. There are particular aspects of the worldview that have to be taken into account. As I will try to show, the worldview has no proper equivalents for a paradigmatic way of thinking that explores religion by reference to dichotomous notions like religious/secular, religious/political or sacred/profane--especially if these notions are conceptualized in an essentialist manner. …

Religion, Post-Religionism, and Religioning: Religious Studies and Contemporary Cultural Debates1

AbstractThe interaction between the contemporary study of religion and contemporary cultural debates has tended to be marked by indifference, and there have been relatively few attempts to engage with the discourses of postmodern theory. In this paper I examine some of the ways in which recent anthropologists have sought to question some of their basic disciplinary assumptions with regard to the 'culture concept', particularly by putting forward strategies of 'writing against culture' or by writing culture in more dynamic terms (as cultural or culturing). This insight, which is relevant in itself to the contemporary study of religion, can be extended to a re-evaluation of the 'religion' concept, which I suggest could be reconstructed in terms of practice theory as religious practice or religioning. In conclusion I argue that to maintain its relevance within the broad field of contemporary humanities scholarship, the discipline of religious studies needs to aligrt itself more clearly (theoretically and methodologically) with the dynamic interface between the approaches of cultural anthropology, cultural theory, and other postmodern' theoretical discourses.

Religious studies and theology

The liberation of religious studies from mechanical inclusion into the structure of the so-called scientific-atheistic theory of Marxism, the isolation and designation of it into an independent branch of humanitarian knowledge, actualized the issue of the correlation of religious studies disciplines, in particular the philosophy of religion, and theology or theology. The last terms we use here are unambiguous. Historically, the first one serves to define the theological theory of Catholicism and Protestantism, and the second one is Orthodoxy.

The Academic Study of Buddhism in the United States: A Current Analysis

This paper presents the results of a survey of 125 scholars in the discipline of Buddhist Studies, conducted during the academic year 1992-3. The results document the age range of the respondents, their gender, the schools at which they earned their academic degrees, their rank, geographic area of expertise, professional societies to which they belong and hold positions of authority in, journals and presses in which they publish, as well as the editorial positions they maintain, citation of grants obtained, and comparative publication data. The survey is presented in a contextual demographic framework relative to the discipline of Religious Studies and is nominally self-reflective.

Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse Part One: Possible Judeo-Christian Influences

Sociologists are locked in a contentious debate with mental health personnel over the reality of intergenerational satanic abuse. Prominent sociologists insist that the satanic accounts are part of a moral panic fuelled by the media, conservative churches, and professionals who use directive, suggestive, or leading questions in their counselling and interviewing sessions. Many therapists, in contrast, are convinced that the intensity of their clients' horrific memories along with the basic similarities of many clients' accounts strongly suggest that the ritual abuse accounts are true. Drawing from the discipline of religious studies, this study argues that readily accessible religions texts that often are central to our culture may provide inspiration to people who either want to sanctify their deviance or venerate the reputed god of this world (i.e. Satan). Using interviews and diaries from several alleged survivors, this study compares excerpts from their accounts with doctrinal precedents for satanic ritual abuse in deviant interpretations of the Judeo-Christian tradition. While the article stops short of stating that intergenerational satanic accounts are true, it insists that at least some of them are plausible.

A Report On the "International Academic Conference On Religion," Beijing, April 6-10, 1992

The International Association for the History of Religions (1AHR) was especially pleased to hold a conference for the first time in China—the second time in Asia (as an IAHR International Congress was held in Tokyo in 1958). The IAHR aims to be a truly international organization and has been very supportive in recent years of the nascent discipline of Religious Studies in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In this report, I would like to introduce the conference's organizers and participants, its academic content, and its overall nature.

Religious Studies: The Shaping of a Field and a Guide to Reference Resources

As with most modern academic disciplines, religious studies emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a discrete area of inquiry. Prior to that time, most scholarly literature on religion had an apologetic purpose; that is, it was designed to promote the beliefs and practices of a particular religion or reli gious style. Many writers took as their task advancing religious faith and assumed that readers were members of religious groups espousing their own creeds or dogmas. Few were interested in ! examining the phenomenon of reli gion itself or the ways in which religion and culture were intertwined in virtually every human society. In Euro-American society, much writ ing on religion took for granted the superiority of the Christian or per haps the Western biblical tradition, and when other religious traditions came under scrutiny and were con trasted with Christianity especially, they were generally seen as inferior and somehow less worthy. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, some scholars began to realize that religious expression and experience cut across cultural lines, that in their own context all religions had internal integrity, and that religion manifested itself in simi lar patterns wherever it occurred. Most scholars agreed that human beings in all places and all times sought to endow their experience with meaning and that the pro cess of doing so was the basic religious enterprise. Such realization gave birth to the modern academic study of religion or the discipline of religious studies. This essay will first look at religion or religious studies as an academic discipline by identifying selected key figures whose theories and interpretations continue to shape the field of religious studies. Then it will briefly annotate selected reference works that provide basic information about

A Report on the “International Academic Conference on Religion” Beijing, April 6–10, 1992

The International Association for the History of Religions (1AHR) was especially pleased to hold a conference for the first time in China—the second time in Asia (as an IAHR International Congress was held in Tokyo in 1958). The IAHR aims to be a truly international organization and has been very supportive in recent years of the nascent discipline of Religious Studies in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In this report, I would like to introduce the conference's organizers and participants, its academic content, and its overall nature.

Commitment, Theology, and the Dilemma of Religious Studies at the State University

AbstractThe dominant practice among scholars in Religious Studies has been to exclude committed religious belief from the teaching of religion. Theology was once the center of the academic study of religion, but its present-day exclusion has deprived Religious Studies of a methodological center characteristic of a true academic discipline, and thus Religious Studies appears to be merely a marginal interdisciplinary program rather than a discipline in its own right. Theology was once taught in a denominational way that is inappropriate to the pluralism of a secular university. Another understanding of theology, however, is as a distinctive worldview offering a unifying perspective on life, a worldview which has the same rights on the campus as any other contemporary worldview. The presence of theology so understood would restore the methodological center to the discipline of Religious Studies and would enhance that intellectual pluralism to which the modern university is committed.

A Report On the "International Academic Conference On Religion," Beijing, April 6-10, 1992

The International Association for the History of Religions (1AHR) was especially pleased to hold a conference for the first time in China—the second time in Asia (as an IAHR International Congress was held in Tokyo in 1958). The IAHR aims to be a truly international organization and has been very supportive in recent years of the nascent discipline of Religious Studies in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In this report, I would like to introduce the conference's organizers and participants, its academic content, and its overall nature.