Overview

In these essays, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion in colleges and universities in North America and Europe - that studies almost always exhibit a religious bias. To explore this issue, Wiebe looks at the religious and moral agendas behind the study of religion, showing that the boundaries between the objective study of religion and religious education as a tool for bettering society have become blurred. As a result, he argues, religious studies departments have fostered an environment where religion has become a learned or scholarly practice, rather than the object of academic scrutiny. This book provides a critical history of the failure of 20th- and 21st-century scholars to follow through on the 19th-century ideal of an objective scientific study of religious thought and behaviour. Although emancipated from direct ecclesiastical control and, to some extent, from sectarian theologizing, Wiebe argues that research and scholarship in the academic department of religious studies has failed to break free from religious constraints. He shows that an objective scientific study of religious thought and practice is not only possible, but the only appropriate approach to the study of religious phenomena.

Full Product Details

Author:   Donald Wiebe (University of Toronto, Canada)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Weight:   0.531kg
ISBN:  

9781350103436

ISBN 10:   1350103438
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   14 November 2019
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. Including Religion in Religious Studies : The Problematic Idea of Religious Studies 2. Secular Theology Is Still Theology, Not the Academic Study of Religion 3. The Scientific Study of Religion and Its Cultured Despisers 4. Apologetic Modes of Theorizing 5. The Learned Practice of Religion: A Review of the History of Religious Studies in Canada and Its Portent for the Future 6. Affirming Religion in the History of Religious Studies in Canada 7. Religion Thin and Thick: The Development of Religious Studies in the American University 8. Incurably Religious: The American Academy of Religion at Fifty-Five 9. American Influence on the Shape of Things to Come: Religious Studies in the Twenty-First Century 10. Religious Studies in North America during the Cold War 11. The Desire for Moral Validation 12. Removing Religion from the Study of Religion: A Nineteenth-Century Innovation 13. Modernism and the Study of Religion 14. Rejecting a Science-Lite Study of Religion in the Modern University 15. Conclusion: Need Religious Studies Remain Conspicuously Unscientific ? 16. Epilogue: Tending to Werblowsky's Concerns Notes References Index

Reviews

Wiebe has done it again! In this collection he offers a framework for what should be the appropriate study of religion in the modern university. Providing a refreshing antidote to the irenic and the interfaith, Wiebe maintains that the study of religion must be a scientific endeavor unencumbered by religious or moralizing agendas. A science of religion is about knowledge pure and simple, and not about slogans that invoke the betterment of individuals and society. * Aaron W. Hughes, Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religion, University of Rochester, USA * Donald Wiebe’s work rightfully remains at the center of debates on the study of religion’s shape and its limits, making it required reading for anyone concerned with how “the study of” and “the practice of” ought to relate to one another; the unrelenting rigor of his advocacy for a truly scientific study of religion keeps the field honest by preventing readers from ever forgetting what was and remains at stake when scholars study religion. * Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama; among his recent books are Fabricating Religion (2018) and the co-edited Reading J. Z. Smith (2018). *

Wiebe has done it again! In this collection he offers a framework for what should be the appropriate study of religion in the modern university. Providing a refreshing antidote to the irenic and the interfaith, Wiebe maintains that the study of religion must be a scientific endeavor unencumbered by religious or moralizing agendas. A science of religion is about knowledge pure and simple, and not about slogans that invoke the betterment of individuals and society. * Aaron W. Hughes, Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religion, University of Rochester, USA * Donald Wiebe's work rightfully remains at the center of debates on the study of religion's shape and its limits, making it required reading for anyone concerned with how the study of and the practice of ought to relate to one another; the unrelenting rigor of his advocacy for a truly scientific study of religion keeps the field honest by preventing readers from ever forgetting what was and remains at stake when scholars study religion. * Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama; among his recent books are Fabricating Religion (2018) and the co-edited Reading J. Z. Smith (2018). *

Author Information

Donald Wiebe is Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College, University of Toronto, Canada.

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