Abstract
Last year’s editorial, “How can mainstream approaches become more critical?” (Goldstein, Boer, King and Boyarin, 2015) provoked some strong responses. Initially, these occurred in social media—a place which one might think unlikely for intellectual discussion but in some ways has become its vanguard. There a debate ensued (mostly between Russell McCutcheon, Craig Martin, and CRR Editor Warren S. Goldstein), which was published subsequently in Religion Bulletin under the title “On the Nature and Ends of Critique in the Study of Religion.2” After that, we received two submissions, one by Craig Martin and the other by Timothy Fitzgerald, which were largely responses to the editorial. Both were published in the December 2015 issue of CRR (see Fitzgerald, 2015 and Martin, 2015). They focused on a line of inquiry we had neglected in our editorial, centering on the problems with the category of religion, which Fitzgerald has coined “critical religion.”
Here, we want to engage critical religion as articulated by McCutcheon, Fitzgerald, and Martin, recognizing that they do not stand as a cohesive unit and that there may be as much disagreement between them as there is agreement. While we appreciate the many insights that critical religion has contributed to our understanding of religion as a category, we also find limitations in the debate over the category and the ensuing assumptions concerning the methods of scholarly analysis of religion. In juxtaposition to critical religion, we shall offer a critical theory of religion more narrowly defined (a position with which we closely identify).
In the Facebook exchange, McCutcheon’s and Martin’s objections centered on our value laden approach—which is an aspect that we share with religious traditions. 1 We argued that in order to engage in critique, one must select values as a ground for evaluation. McCutcheon pointed out that values are socially located, and we agree. Nevertheless, we see his attempt to gain a historical, institutional understanding as similarly value laden (a quest for truth). Furthermore, we acknowledge that values are ultimately subjective and that they approach universality—for better or worse—only when consensus is built around them. However, without them, research is merely descriptive. Facts do not speak for themselves; they are ordered and structured to make an argument. McCutcheon’s and Martin’s position is mostly deconstructive; it is based on a suspicion of universal values and an attempt to socially locate them as interests. Identifying such social loci is essential. Yet, scholarship only becomes critical when it uses values to critique sets of social actors and their particular interests. It can only be counter-hegemonic when it reveals particular interests hidden behind proclaimed universal values. As it stands, the approach of critical religion is solely deconstructive and not constructive; it does not build anything. Critique should be the first step in this direction but not the last.
Craig Martin and Timothy Fitzgerald in their contributions to CRR move away from the question of values (although these questions are implicit in their arguments) toward the genealogy of the concept of religion. Following ultimately Nietzsche, Foucault, and Talal Asad, they trace the concept’s origins to the European modern period and point out the problems with its use. They have staked out these positions as part of a larger debate within religious studies.
Martin correctly points out that religion is an ideologically loaded term. It has been used as a rhetorical weapon and its application to non-western societies as well as to pre-modernity (where the term is not indigenous) is problematic. To echo the terms of the Facebook debate, he sees it as problematic because it is a normative term. To correct this position, he calls for a non-normative analytic use of the concept of religion, if this is possible. Paradoxically, at the end, he writes: “the academic study of religion need not require the word “religion” to have a referent” (Martin, 2015: 300). Critical religion, that is, seeks to eliminate the very term which gives the study of religion its cohesion.
While understanding the problematic aspects of the category of religion, a critical theory of religion, in contrast, sees that category as a useful heuristic tool. We need to distinguish between religion as a category, religion as a container (a set of beliefs (in deities, sacred texts), practices (rituals, performances), and institutions), and religion as an empirical entity. Like any other category, religion does not have a single definition. As a category, it is used to group a broad range of beliefs, practices, and institutions, enabling us to take one set and compare them with another. Finally, it allows us to take other sets of beliefs, practices, and institutions, which are not typically considered to be religions (e.g. secular “religions”) and point out the extent to which they resemble more typical understandings of the category. We recognize that the term itself was born in the Occident’s path to modernity, and that it is indeed value laden. To alleviate this, we would suggest a more social scientific construction of the category of religion. This category can draw on western as well as non-western traditions and be employed in a more self-critical, if not strictly “value-neutral” manner. It need not have one agreed upon universal definition, since we think such a definition is impossible, but may contain multiple definitions (after all, words have more than one meaning) derived from some common characteristics of the world’s religions. As Martin points out, the word religion can be used as a rhetorical weapon either way; it can be used to defend or attack not only religion per se but also one type of religion (or culture) against another. As we have stated in previous editorials, our goal is not to be pro-religion or anti-religion but to understand religions in both their positive and negative manifestations. Religion is not the only category that has these problems. Concepts such as identity, nation, and even history are equally loaded. Does that mean that we should abandon them? Or can we not still effectively use them, albeit self-critically, as ways to group and compare related sets of phenomena?
Although Timothy Fitzgerald’s article shares in common with Craig Martin’s theses a critique of the category of religion, it takes aim at modern capitalism’s neo-liberal assumptions. Fitzgerald (2015) clarifies that by critical religion he means a “critical historical deconstruction of “religion” and related categories” (303–304). Fitzgerald (2015) argues that the category of religion is used far too broadly (like the term “socialism”) and ultimately “ceases to have any specific meaning” (304). Fitzgerald bases his argument on Walter Benjamin’s observation that capitalism is a form of religion. This framework enables it to escape critique precisely because it is based on a set of beliefs but not acknowledged as such. The dogma of capitalism, according to Fitzgerald, is secular liberalism (307). Religion, moreover, is a category used by secular liberals to exert power over others (305). When the term is used uncritically, it reinforces these power relations. The use of the category of religion, like other categories, reveals power relationships (310). Fitzgerald engages in a deconstruction of many of the ideas upon which secular liberalism is based—laissez-faire (free market) economics, the right to private property, and Social Darwinism, which amount to an “irrational faith” (309). However, Fitzgerald contradicts himself. On the one hand, he says that the category of religion is used too broadly but, on the other hand, he applies it to neo-liberal capitalism. Thus, one aspect of Fitzgerald’s critique is that secular dogmas such as the idea of “self-regulating markets” or that of “nation-states” can be described as religious.
Fitzgerald engages in a deconstruction of the category of religion itself and of its opposite—the secular—placing both into the historical context in which they emerged (311). Academic and polemical discourse on religion is based on a false binary: the religious-secular divide (306). The critical study of religion, according to Fitzgerald, involves an elimination of this binary (312). Fitzgerald argues that secular liberalism is based “on unobservable metaphysical abstractions” like other totalizing discourses, and that there is no difference between the fictitious faiths of liberalism and those of conventional religions (313). He writes, “the postulates of secular liberal ideology are as imaginary as any religious belief” (313). It is a provocative claim, and yet here we aver—as we imagine Fitzgerald must likewise—a continuing adherence to methods of argumentation, verification, and potential falsifiability commonly called “scientific” which are, implicitly if not necessarily, secular.
That the term has been used as a rhetorical weapon is another matter, but in this respect the category of religion is by no means unique. Just think of the overuse of the word “terrorism” in the current discourse. By critique, Fitzgerald “means bringing into consciousness the categories of the understanding that operate largely below consciousness” (315). This unveiling is what he does with the category of religion as well as those of neo-liberal economics. Fitzgerald sees his as an emancipatory project that prevents the “uncritical reproduction of the secular liberal categories,” which create an “illusion that serves a mystified liberal capitalist power formation” (316). Fitzgerald deconstructs the category of religion so as to use it as a weapon against liberal capitalism. He does this so that we can see the arbitrariness of what is categorized as “religion” by viewing secular tenets through the same analytic lens. While we see his deconstruction as illuminating, it is not without its problems. The problem is not in the category of religion but in the ways in which it can be used (including in its application to capitalism).
On method and values
Along with their theoretical contributions, Martin’s theses are pragmatic in their execution, walking us through various scenarios whereby one might be tempted to endorse an unsophisticated colloquialism or conceptual anachronism. There are points where it may be acceptable to use modern concepts to further our analysis, but Martin argues that discretion is imperative. Much as it is bewildering to have our own professional categories analyzed according to the ancient Indian caste system, so too must we must be wary of applying our own normative categories in a way that results in a corporatized rendering of imperial Rome. The idea of Marcus Aurelius allocating hedge funds is as bemusing as the image of Craig Martin tending to a sacred fire. But it is not just humorous; it is bad scholarship – “a mark of intellectual laziness.” It is here that we see the reinsertion of values into our framework of analysis. In these days of austerity measures and shrinking tenure lines, no scholar wants to be perceived as lazy or naïve. Most likewise do not want to be viewed as contributing to an imbalance of power that accompanies attempts to define religion. Just as we do not wish to see ourselves as the objects of unfair or unbalanced analysis, neither would we want to be involved in intellectual processes whereby our subjects of study are inexcusably reduced to smoke and mirrors.
Similarly, in Fitzgerald’s work, we are invited to consider our practices of analysis vis-à-vis a critique of the distribution of power in late modern capitalism. Fitzgerald evokes what could almost be seen as a “family resemblances model” in which power serves as the underlying modality distributed through religion, economics, politics, etc. and is executed through a binary discourse that eclipses or obfuscates the larger processes of power negotiation and distribution. His example of the Blair-Hitchens debate (2015: 306) is telling and unfortunately, while exposing the problematic of the “good-religion/bad-religion” binary, it evokes a new binary between good and bad critique. Are we convinced by the evidence or by our distaste for Hitchens’ aggressive polemics and over-simplification of data, and by Blair’s policies of interventionism, his close friendship with George W. Bush, and oft-criticized practices of spin doctoring? We return to our earlier point that evidence is ordered and structured in ways that can never be neutral. Both Martin and Fitzgerald offer a compelling and intelligent discussion of the reasons why a critique of the category is imperative and we agree. But we call for a scrutiny of why we agree. Is there a hierarchy at play that pulls us beyond the process of analysis to our larger commitments to equality and justice? In his introductory textbook for the study of religion, Martin (2012: xiv) aligns himself with Bruce Lincoln, noting that he sees his task as one in which exposing the fault lines of religious and cultural domination directs and indeed necessitates a social critique. Exposing these fault lines of religious domination falls in line with Fitzgerald’s call to make the unconscious conscious. As Martin points out, it necessitates critique. This “criticism of religion” necessitates and enables further critique (Marx and Engels, 1978: 53). But the critique needs to have a goal. It must not only deconstruct but it must construct something better beyond it. It is only through the use of values and ideals that this can be done.
We agree with these authors that the attempt to discriminate between good and bad religion, the insertion of Protestant-derived categories, the assumption of a priori ontologies, and arrogant interjection in debates among religious adherents is not only inappropriate but makes for fallacious scholarship. Nevertheless, we wish to pose the question: Is it time to find new ways to unmask the processes through which we position our own intellectual tasks? Calls for neutrality and objectivity have long resonated through the methodological articulations we have proffered defining our tasks for ourselves, our students, and our colleagues as a way of distinguishing our discipline from the specter of theology. There is an anthropological adage that promotes the use of the body as an instrument of knowledge (Ortner, 1995: 173). Might there likewise be a means through which we see our social locations and ethical commitments as something we endorse rather than set aside in our scholarly undertakings? It is possible that the risk is too great and will reverse the de-theologization that we have worked so hard to set as the standard for our discipline. But to not entertain this possibility likewise stagnates development in the field and reduces other scholars to objects rather than colleagues, relegating them to the sort of treatment Blair and Hitchens give religion, and the sort of treatment Fitzgerald in turn gives them. And so we ask again not only, is there a place for values in the study of religion, but also, is there a way to be valueless in the academic venture? We offer the pages of our journal as a place for these debates and disagreements, the fine-tuning of nuance to occur.
While we think that critical religion (a critique of the category of religion) has made significant contributions to the field, it is just one application of critique in the realm of religion. If taken too rigidly, it might prevent us from moving on to other areas that we deem more pressing, namely, the role that religious systems play in either reinforcing dominant power structures or as operating as vehicles for progressive social change. This latter focus we consider to be the task of a critical theory of religion. And that task has barely begun.