Donald Wiebe - Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University

The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University

Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation

Series editors: Luther H. Martin, Donald Wiebe, William W. McCorkle Jr., D. Jason Slone, and Radek Kundt

Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation publishes cutting-edge research in the new and growing field of scientific studies in religion. Its aim is to publish empirical, experimental, historical, and ethnographic research on religious thought, behavior, and institutional structures. The series works with a broad notion of scientific that includes innovative work on understanding religion(s), both past and present. With an emphasis on the cognitive science of religion, the series includes complementary approaches to the study of religion, such as psychology and computer modelling of religious data. Titles seek to provide explanatory accounts for the religious behaviors under review, both past and present.

The Attraction of Religion , edited by D. Jason Slone and James A. Van Slyke

The Cognitive Science of Religion , edited by D. Jason Slone and William W. McCorkle Jr .

Contemporary Evolutionary Theories of Culture and the Study of Religion , Radek Kundt

Death Anxiety and Religious Belief , Jonathan Jong and Jamin Halberstadt

Language, Cognition, and Biblical Exegesis , edited by Ronit Nikolsky, Istvan Czachesz, Frederick S. Tappenden and Tamas Biro

The Mind of Mithraists , Luther H. Martin

New Patterns for Comparative Religion , William E. Paden

Philosophical Foundations of the Cognitive Science of Religion , Robert N. McCauley with E. Thomas Lawson

Religion Explained? , edited by Luther H. Martin and Donald Wiebe

Religion in Science Fiction , Steven Hrotic

Religious Evolution and the Axial Age , Stephen K. Sanderson

The Roman Mithras Cult , Olympia Panagiotidou with Roger Beck

Solving the Evolutionary Puzzle of Human Cooperation , Glenn Barenthin

In Memory of

Gary Lease (19402008)

University of California, Santa Cruz

A champion of the scientific study of religion

The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University

Donald Wiebe

Contents

The fifteen chapters published in this volume were written over the past two decades. Ten appeared in earlier publications (Chapters 13; 57, 9, 10, 13, and 14). Four chapters are published here for the first time (Chapters 8, 11, 12, and 15). Chapter 4 was first delivered as a plenary address to the European Association for the Study of Religion but portions of it appeared in print as two separate articles: one in Religio and the other in Einheit der Wirklichkeiten . Aside from minor corrections, references updated and reformatted, and slight amendments to titles in order to bring out their common focus in this book, these papers appear as first published.

I am most grateful to the editors and publishers listed below for permission to include in this volume the chapters listed below.

Religious Studies. In John R. Hinnells (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion . London: Routledge (Taylor and Francis), 2005: 98124.

Secular Theology Is Still Theology, Not the Study of Religion. Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion 37/3 (2008): 7781

The Scientific Study of Religion and Its Cultured Despisers. In Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcehon (Eds.), Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith . London: Equinox, 2008: 46779.

Religious Biases in Funding Religious Studies Research. Religio 17/2 (2009): 30218.

An Encroaching Spirituality: What Hope Remains for a Science of Religion. In Eva-Maria Glasbrenner and Christian Hackbarth-Johnson (Eds.), Einheit der Wirklicheiten : Festschrift anlsslich des 60 . Gebrtstags von Michael von Brck. (Mnchen: Manya Verlag, 2009): 30218.

The Learned Practice of Religion: A Review of the History of Religious Studies in Canada and Its Portent for the Future. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses , 35/34 (2006): 475501.

Harold Coward: Fifty Years of Religious Studies in Canada: A Personal Retrospective. Religion , 46/2 (2016): 29195.

Religion Thin and Thick: On the Development of Religious Studies in the American University. Reviews in Religion and Theology , 8/2 (2001): 12632.

American Influence on the Shape of Things to Come: Religious Studies in the Twenty-First Century. Journal of the Korean Association for the History of Religions , 20 (2000): 124.

Religious Studies in North America During the Cold War. In Luther H. Martin, Dalibor Papusek, and Iva Dolezalova (Eds.), The Academic Study of Religion During the Cold War (New York: Peter Lang Press, 2001): 26788.

Modernism. In Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (Eds.), Guide to the Study of Religion (London: Cassell): 35164.

An Old Methodenstreit Made New Again: Rejecting a Science-Lite Study of Religion. In A. K. Petersen, I. S. Gilhus, L. H. Martin, J. S. Jensen, and J. Sorensen (Eds.), Evolution, Cognition, and the History Of Religion: A New Synthesis , Festschrift in Honour of Armin W. Geertz, (Leiden: Brill, 2019) 13040.

I also wish to acknowledge and thank colleagues and friends who have read and criticized earlier drafts of one or more of these chapters: Marsha Hewitt, Abrahim (Ivan) Khan, Russell McCutcheon, Rosalind Hackett, Martha Cunningham, Gary Lease, Tom Lawson, and Luther Martin. Luther has read most of these chapters, often more than once, providing critically important feedback on my views of the long struggle to see the scientific study of religions gain some headway in our colleges and universities. I also wish to thank Dr. Jonathan Lofft (a post-doctoral fellow in the Faculty of Divinity in Trinity College) for putting these chapters into final form for publication. I am also deeply indebted to my copy editor, Nandini Satish, for her knowledge and efficiency in dealing with this ms, and to Leeladevi Ulaganathan, Project Manager, for this title, for her patience in getting me through the final stages of this project. Finally, I wish to thank Lucy Carroll, Bloomsburys assistant editor for religious studies, for the encouragement, advice, and practical support she provided me in bringing this project to completion.