How can mainstream approaches become more critical?

Religious Studies

Critical Research on Religion has entered the conversation about the study of religion at an opportune time. Scholars in the fields of religion and biblical studies are re-conceptualizing their relationships, following what has come to be known in some academic circles as the “great divorce,” which saw the separation of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature conferences from 2008 through 2010. Separations always are complicated and while the grounds may have been several, the general consensus is that the divorce involved a tryst with a third party and former paramour—theology. Questions circulated around the appropriateness of scholars’ sympathy towards and intimacy with religious positions. These sympathetic positions run the gamut from an orthodox or conservative stance represented by figures who dance between academic and theological circles to the promotion of more liberal ecumenical and multifaith perspectives by those who see the discipline as one whose task is primarily civic education and the promotion of religious literacy. Amid these debates, key figures in the field have sought to redirect our focus away from moralizing discourses through the promotion of a critical inquiry that underscores the importance of objectivity while simultaneously recognizing the impossibility of achieving it.

In a discipline characterized by anxiety about what it purports to “do” and what the “doing” does, method and theory have served as a lynchpin in attempts at self-description among scholars of religion. One only needs to survey undergraduate and graduate course offerings, job advertisements, and academic biographies to find ample evidence that students, scholars, departments, and even scholarly journals lay claim to the pervasiveness of method and theory. Indeed, as conversations both within the pages of this journal and elsewhere have suggested, questions about what it is religion scholars do and how they do it have taken on increased prominence and involved new criteria, as exemplified by the work of Russell McCutcheon and his colleagues.

Two waves of thought have accompanied the call for more critical studies of religion. First and foremost, as mentioned, has been the distancing of the study of religion from those approaches primarily sympathetic towards or promoting a theological perspective. Those who have positioned themselves alongside Jonathan Z Smith, Bruce Lincoln, and others have sought to forestall claims of theological exceptionalism, whether coming from the right or from the left. Closely linked to this is a second stage in which careful reading of certain scholarship reveals the covert presence of a discourse that tends to reinforce the legitimating structures of religious institutions. A landmark publication in this wave continues to be Russell McCutcheon’s (2001) collection, Critics Not Caretakers, which systematically works through instances of public scholarship that promote a theo-sympathetic understanding of religion. As Aaron Hughes (2013) has noted elsewhere, it is not sufficient for those interested in critical inquiry to simply express their work as not theologically-oriented. Rather they have to be clear about and set an agenda for work that extends the study of religion into new fields, while maintaining the focus on religion as a human and social construction. Now that the erstwhile divorce—or better trial separation—between the AAR and the SBL seems to have been patched up, perhaps it is time to set aside accusations, hurt feelings, and the inevitable lawyers’ offices and return to more mundane things: someone, after all, still has to pick the kids up from soccer practice.

At this moment of potentially renewed energy, we believe that an increased familiarity with critical theory broadly speaking could be mobilized more fully to refine and describe the study of religion as a matter of scholarship in the service of human interest. If the study of religion is to take on a broad critical lens, it must continue to branch out and (re)acquaint itself with new and old friends and romantic attachments. In other words, the question of how the field of religious studies might be more critical is a moving and dynamic target. Even if not everyone in the field is convinced that this effort is imperative or even ideal, there does appear to be at this juncture a growing mass of scholars interested in joining the effort.

Scholars of religion who adopt critical methodologies do so with two aims: first, they seek to describe and analyze various religious phenomena from the perspective of critical theory, broadly speaking; and second, they remain aware of their own role, as well as that of the discipline in shaping discourses—both academic and public—about religion. The study of religion recently has been—to paraphrase the subtitle of a book by Robert Orsi (2005)—as much about the scholars who study religion as it has been about religious agents themselves. That is, the study of religion seeks to dissect its own disciplinary origins and agenda alongside its pursuit of the study of religious data. When done well, this process gets at the very heart of a discipline that places methodological and theoretical approaches at its center, but when done poorly it runs the risk of descending into an all too familiar polemic that is of little interest to anyone other than the participants.

The aforementioned reference to Orsi evokes the oft-cited, but under-theorized, category of “lived religion” and the turn to materiality or material religion (Hall, 1997; McDannell, 1995; Morgan, 2010), which over the past couple of decades has shifted focus away from official interpretations of religious discourses and practices towards adherents on the margins—a sphere which has historically and continues to be an animating concern for feminists, Marxists, queer theorists, postcolonial theorists, and others who adopt the lens of critical theory. For many scholars, this turn has necessitated a shift towards ethnographic studies of religious communities and an increased interest in questions of performance, embodiment, and affect. The move from official doctrine has also opened up space for consideration of secularisms and secularity over and against secularization as avenues of study for scholars of religion (Asad, 2003; Bender and Taves, 2012; Taylor, 2007). In addition, following trends in history and anthropology, the study of religion has, after years of silent treatment, turned towards consideration of economics and industrial capitalisms as emerging areas of interests. In doing so, scholars are uncovering the ways that the moral and the material become intertwined and indistinguishable from each other (Callahan et al., 2010; Moreton, 2010; Rudnyckyj, 2014). This is another area of intersection where those who have taken up the mantle of the Frankfurt school might provide added insight and background knowledge.

How might the academic study of religion contribute to those in other disciplines who adopt critical methodologies? Having long stood at the crossroads of different disciplines and having fought hard to articulate its own space in the academy, religious studies is profoundly aware of the need to recognize, challenge, and at times subvert the norms and assumptions that underlie its scholarly work. Nothing is sacred within this discipline—not even those systems of classification and categories of analysis, which might elsewhere adopt a sui generis or foundational status. As Jonathan Z. Smith (1990: 115) has explained, scholars of religion have been forced to admit that theirs is an undertaking, which occurs “within the scholar’s mind.” An act of congruence, that Smith notes may on the part of the scholar stem from good theoretical reasons but which ultimately presupposes cohabitation on the part of various religious phenomena “without ever requiring that they be consenting adults.” Critical religious studies brings to the forefront not only the desire to articulate but also the need to uncover actively and banish from the bedroom—albeit with much fanfare—its less favorable attributes when they are no longer serving the needs of the discipline. As such, religious studies may provide an antidote to those within critical theory who cling too closely to canonical figures and theories whose stamina has understandably wavered with time.

Theology

Is it possible to have a critical approach to, or indeed, within theology? In the turf wars between studies in religion and theology, it often seems as though the answer is a resounding “no.” “Theos-logos” is a discourse concerning God, and one must have a deity or more to speak about for theology to do its job. Or at least—like Feuerbach—one must construct such an object of study. Does this not render theology hopelessly uncritical, non-scientific, if not superstitious? There are many who would assert this point. In response, quite a few theologians have seen fit not merely to claim theology as so defined, but to outflank their opponents. They argue for the ontological priority of Christian theology in all dimensions of life. ¹ It is a breathtaking version of theological imperialism that intriguingly mirrors the economic imperialism that has burst forth in the last 25 years (since 1989) (Milonakis and Fine, 2009; Fine and Milonakis, 2009; Fine and Milonakis, 2012). Economic imperialism universalizes on the basis of chronic reductionism (dehistoricizing, desocializing, and individualizing), thereby claiming that all aspects of human existence may be explained in economic terms, such as self-interest, comparative advantage, and supply and demand. Of course, the imperializing is undertaken by a specific theory and a specific form of economic activity: neoclassical economic theory as the theory of capitalism. Analogously, theological imperialism (again after 1989) seeks to show that all forms of modern thought have their ontological basis in theology. It seeks to reduce all of the many forms of, say, political thought, or sociological theory, or even the hard sciences, to a theological substrate. Therefore, proper analysis of all these many forms is actually theological analysis and must be undertaken on a theological register.

We may interpret this situation in different ways: a compensation for chronic marginalization; a signal of our post-secular age; the return of theology to its rightful place after a modernist aberration. But it is worth noting that the type of theology proposed for such an imperializing agenda is of a particular type: Western Christian theology with a distinctly Anglo-Catholic, if not fully Roman Catholic flavor. It is not difficult to avoid the resuscitation of a Christendom type of imperialism, albeit with a post-secular twist (Milbank, 1990).

We suggest a more modest approach to theology, which may indeed be and has often been deeply critical. Two brief steps are required for it. First, as Roland Boer argues elsewhere (2014), we need to move past the assumption that religious belief or engagement comprises the core and thereby overarching unity of theology and realize that such engagement is a small and by no means necessary part. Only then is theology able to attain its full scope: to deal with nature and the environment (creation), the human condition (anthropology), why the world is the way it is (harmatology), the problem of suffering, the nature of the human subject (via theological anthropology, e.g., Christology), the nature of history, hopes for the future, how human beings might live together (ecclesiology), and the nature of mythology (the central stories with which theology deals) (Boer, 2014). We suggest that this richer sense of theology has been lost in the process of gradual reductionism.

Second, we need to specify how we understand critical in the combination ‘critical theology.’ By critical we mean discernment with an eye to human and natural flourishing. What constitutes the conditions for such flourishing is of course the subject of endless debate across the many positions on the left and right. So let us indicate our take by means of some key abstract terms: equality, just reallocation and mutual aid; or in terms of the slogan, “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” In a theological context, this means discerning progressive religious voices from reactionary ones. This is not an easy task, but it is one that has a rich tradition.

Biblical Criticism

The situation with biblical scholarship is somewhat different from that of theology. However, we suggest that the historical narrative of modern biblical scholarship is analogous to the struggles of studies of religion. This is a narrative of differentiation, in which biblical studies at some point broke away from the old queen. The methods and assumptions of theology were no longer deemed to be appropriate, the connections with church and synagogue were seen to be deleterious—indeed, theological approaches as such were increasingly viewed with profound suspicion. It was assumed that a religiously engaged person would not be able to assess biblical texts “scientifically,” “objectively,” or “critically”—where “critical” was assumed to be an ideology-free zone. Instead, such a person was beholden to an unverifiable and perhaps “irrational” belief in a supernatural world, or at least was dependent on an institution that constructs its ideologies and social structures on the basis of connections with such a putative world. Or, one may have put such beliefs away, as is often the case among biblical critics, but one remains sympathetic to theological assumptions and institutions. All of this, it was by then agreed, should be banished from serious, critical study.

Is this a recent development? Despite the analogies with studies in religion, it actually dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when biblical criticism began to differentiate itself earnestly from theology. More specifically, it began in Western Europe and in response to certain strains of Protestant theology. Part of the reason was political, for the Prussian emperors (Friedrich Wilhelm III and Friedrich Wilhelm IV) severely censored any political debate or movement for reform, so such struggles were displaced onto the Bible. This extraordinary attention to biblical interpretation (David Strauss and Bruno Bauer being only the most well-known) generated sophisticated modern methods of interpretation. And part of the reason was also the institutionalization of Pietism, which was adapted and channeled by the Prussian state into acceptable forms. From there, it spread to other theological traditions. The whole historical-critical approach was built on this effort, in which the God-hypothesis was removed by biblical analysis. The deities became characters in the texts (Bauer), or products of the religious imaginations of the authors and the peoples among whom the authors lived, or projections (Feuerbach) of human aspirations, or—as some would put it now—social constructs. But one did not count the gods as historical agents. This new paradigm entailed jettisoning all that had gone before, which was now seen as pre-critical and thereby pre-scientific.

By now a pattern began to appear, in which the ghost of theology played a major role. It goes as follows: a new approach arrives on the scene, full of scandal and challenge. Eventually, this approach becomes canonical and thereby comfortable in an ecclesial and theological context. Within that environment, it becomes a weapon for internal battles—as happened with the use of historical-critical methods of biblical analysis in the struggles between “liberals” and “conservatives.” In response to this apparent accommodation with the old enemy, yet another new approach appears, challenging the subjective, uncritical and theological agenda of the older approach. And so the cycle repeats itself: in each repetition, critics beholden to the new approach spend a good deal of time trying to catch a glimpse of the theological ghost that still seems to haunt the earlier approach. A good recent example of this cycle is the clamor for “secular” and “scientific” biblical criticism (Berlinerblau, 2005). This move mirrors in many respects the growth of the “new atheist” movement, so much so that it may be called a new atheist approach to the Bible. It is prosecuted with a similar evangelical zeal. Meanwhile, other biblical scholars who had thought themselves thoroughly critical and skeptical, now find that they are condemned as theological.

As should be clear by now, we find this pattern unhelpful—especially in our effort to gain some clarity concerning critical biblical studies (let alone religion). The dichotomies of theological-critical, subjective-objective, unscientific-scientific obfuscate rather than clarify. We do not need to rehearse here the well-established criticisms of claims to scientific objectivity—criticisms relating to ideological and political functions, as well as to the changing fortunes of the nomothetic disciplines. ² Instead, we would like to go a step further and argue that what is critical about critical biblical studies is not based upon such oppositions. Instead, the critical (kritikos) cuts across them, rendering them distractions. By critical we mean discerning between what leads to human and natural flourishing and what leads to destruction and withering away.

How can biblical studies possibly contribute to such a desire? Let us answer this question by means of an example. A couple of years ago, Roland Boer and Fernando Segovia (2012) published an edited volume called The Future of the Biblical Past. This was the first effort in more than twenty years to map out the current state of the field, seeking representative voices from all parts of the globe. We soon found that the detached observer was a luxury and fiction afforded almost only to biblical critics from Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. For the majority elsewhere—from the Caribbean through Africa and Asia to the Pacific—this was largely seen as elitist and perhaps even wasteful. Here the Bible has distinct cultural force, in a way that means its interpretation has strikingly immediate consequences. Critical discernment for the sake of human flourishing in these parts is not determined by a skeptical or engaged approach to religion; rather, it challenges either approach to exercise discernment.

Sociology of Religion

Similar to the secular religious divisions between both religious studies and biblical criticism with theology, sociology of religion has had a similar but inverse relation with its parent discipline of sociology. The precursors to the North American sociology of religion associations were originally formed outside the secular American Sociological Society (later renamed the American Sociological Association ASA) as a safe space for sociologists with Protestant or Catholic affinities (Stark and Finke, 2000: 15; Blasi, 2014). Although the first sections of the ASA were formed in 1961, only as recently as 1994 was a sociology of religion section established. While both the theoretical and methodological approach of sociology of religion as a social science has been strictly secular, the affiliations of many of those doing research within the field has contributed to a relative paucity of critique of religion.

While the major paradigms within the sociology of religion largely mirror that of its parent discipline, there have been some striking absences—particularly more critical approaches as we define them in our Aims and Scope. Only recently has this begun to change. While like religious studies, in the larger discipline of sociology critical approaches have become mainstream, the subfield of sociology of religion, in reaction to its parent discipline, has not. Its overall refrain from critique can be gleaned from its overwhelming reliance on two thinkers canonized as classics: Max Weber and Emile Durkheim (and—in contrast to the larger discipline—its omission of Marx).

Although self-confessedly “religiously unmusical,” Weber nevertheless called on interpretive sociology to be “value free,” which has set the tone for much ethnographic research in the subfield. While we applaud the ability of “putting one’s self in the place of the other” (Mead, 1934: 302), we think this is only a first step and that it is necessary to go beyond an interpretive understanding. This is because the actions of those who act on the basis of religious beliefs have consequences—both positive and negative—as we all too often see in the headlines (not that the negative outweighs the positive but that it is more of a spectacle). It is up to a critical approach to evaluate both their beliefs and actions based on a set of values—whether it is the quest for truth, the desire for peace, or the belief in freedom, equality, democracy, justice or any other identified value. But we concede that the first step is in gaining an understanding of them.

Another methodology emanating from Weber, comparative-historical sociology, arose originally out of a critique of the universalistic claims of historical materialism. While there is much in comparative-historical sociology to be lauded, how critical it is depends on the central driving questions and the cases selected for comparison.

The son of a rabbi who embraced sociology as a new secular religion, Durkheim’s contribution to the discipline has more to do with his temporary embrace of positivism and his functionalist perspective. Functionalism has more often than not been seen as how religion contributes to the well functioning of the social system as a whole. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on the system in which it operates and one’s particular attitude towards it. But clearly, not all systems “function” equally well, and certain forms of religion can be dysfunctional as well as functional. They do not only contribute to the smooth operation of “the rhythm of the iron system;” they can also throw wooden shoes into the gears. Depending on who the actors are, the goals they are trying to achieve and the methods they are using, this can be a positive or a negative thing. Critical scholarship is called to the task of evaluation.

Neither Comte nor Durkheim’s positivism came close in technique to our quantitative colleagues with their correlation coefficients and linear regressions—to name the most popular. A misfortunate misunderstanding began with the split between Theodor W. Adorno and Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University with regard to the establishment of the Bureau of Applied Research. This escalated into an antagonism between critical theory and positivism.

Adorno was right to warn of the dangers of using corporate funding to do survey research. What is overlooked is that Adorno and his colleagues also used quantitative methodology in their Studies in Prejudice. The problem is not necessarily in the methodology but in the purposes for which it is used. While we are quite proud of our colleagues in sociology of religion when they obtain large grants from foundations like Lilly or Templeton, we are also keenly aware of the positive disposition these foundations have towards religiosity. The real question is what types of research on religion get this type of funding, and which do not? Beyond this, we see limitations in the types of relationships that quantitative sociology establishes. Quantitative sociology seems to be obsessed with establishing linear relationships, whereas more often it is the non-linear or indirect links that are more revealing. We would like to see more quantitative sociology looking at two-way relationships—looking for feedback loops thereby quantitatively establishing some type of dynamics of interaction. We wait for the day when we receive an article submission titled “Operationalizing Dialectics.” So, quantitative sociologists please take this as a challenge.

There is much to be learned from sociological phenomenology, especially its central tenet that knowledge (including religion) is socially constructed. Yet, the tendency of social constructionists to be silent on the philosophical question of actual “reality” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 1--2; Beckford, 2003: 23) tends to defuse more critical potentialities. Although the early Berger synthesized insights from a number of discourses, his engagement with neoconservativism (Berger, 1986) led him to criticize Marxism but not (despite his many caveats) capitalism. While Berger’s most recent reflections on secularization (Berger, 2014) point the way to a more synthetic approach, his reversal on secularization theory (Berger, 1999) flies in the face of his earlier insights on the same subject (Berger, 1967). We think that social constructionism has considerable unrealized potential. That potential would be more easily realized if, rather than continuing to insist on an ultimately untenable stance of “value-free social science,” it returned to the more critical impulses of its foundational texts.

Finally, rational choice theory has the potential to be critical but in most cases is not. Like rational choice, a critical approach looks at the economics underlying religion. We concede that religious institutions in our society operate within the context of markets behaving like competing firms. Clergy members often seem like salesmen and congregants like consumers. Yet, we do not idealize this situation as the freedom of choice in the context of religious pluralism. We do not think that those who are being rewarded with compensators are getting good use value. While we applaud the disestablishment of religion and the free exercise thereof, we do not idealize competition of religious firms within a marketplace but rather see it as a commodification of religion. The weakness of rational choice theory is that everything (including all types of religion) is rational. Rational choice has a one-dimensional understanding of rationality and disregards non-rational types of social action. Whereas Weber had three sets of opposing types of rationality, rational choice reduces rationality purely to its purposive or instrumental side. For it, all behavior, including what many would consider to be irrational behavior, can be justified.

Yet, as alluded to in the introduction to this section, the grounds in sociology of religion are beginning to shift in a more critical direction. There have been calls for sociologists of religion to break out the subdiscipline’s North American Protestant confines and, like religious studies, to engage more with world religions (Bender, Cadge, Levitt, and Smilde, 2013). There have been observations that mainstream sociology of religion has a pro-religion bias (Smilde and May, 2010). Finally, there have been calls for the sociology of religion to move in more critical directions (Goldstein, 2009; Williams and Josephsohn, 2013; Hjelm, 2014). We have even devoted a special issue titled “Possibilities in the Critical Sociology of Religion” to this topic in our first volume of Critical Research on Religion 2(1) in August 2013.

Conclusion

There is a twofold path for the study of religion to become more critical. The first path is for the study of the religion to become more interdisciplinary; some of the possible steps in that direction are indicated in this editorial. Only when we understand each other’s disciplines and subdisciplines can we arrive at a better understanding not only of the field of religion but its subject matter. To understand necessitates for us to reach across departmental boundaries, for us to communicate with each other, listen to each other, and learn from each other. The second path is to continue to denaturalize, and eventually to overcome, the secular/religious divide in religious studies. While we acknowledge that the religious/secular binary is a useful heuristic tool, the polar ends of it are ideal typical and rather there is a spectrum, a gradient, running from the religious to the secular. Individuals, collectivities and society are in constant flux alternating between the religious and the secular. Militant secularists can be the most dogmatic, while zealots are really reacting to life in this world. Rather than pitting the secular against the religious, we seek a more synthetic approach. In each religious tradition, there is an invaluable content, which through criticism calls for redemption. Likewise, in every secular ideology, there are religious aspects, which need to be discerned.