AAR Plenary 1 (3/11/10): The Future of Religious Studies

Mr. Mathewes asked the audience to reflect on a few contemporary realities in thinking about Religious Studies:

Urbanization: For the first time in history, the majority of humans live in cities.
Aging: Fewer people are having children, and the majority of the population is getting old. It will not be too far in the future when the elderly will outnumber the young. This will have enormous economical and cultural implications.
Politics: The United States is showing an increasing polarization in politics and religion. Liberals tend to be secular, and the religious tend to be conservative.

With regard to world events, "God is winning"--religion is a crucial motivator for major world events, both good and bad.

Religion is more important than ever, yet it still seems to be treated disrespectfully as a field. Mr. Mathewes suggests that this is changing--the future for religious studies is bright, "if we play our cards right". He then discussed religious studies today, and how religious studies scholars can equip themselves to participate in the larger conversation. The key concept here was the interdisciplinary nature of religious studies.

In the last 10 years, religion has reappeared as a serious subject of study. People are interested in the power of religion, both in present times and in history. Religion scholars have things to contribute to other disciplines--history, politics, social science, and others. Mr. Mathewes cited a survey of historians sponsored by the American History Association. The results showed that religious history is the most popular specialization.

There are places where religious scholarship is needed. Sociologists, for instance, have a difficult time knowing where to "place" religion in their field, though it is of great importance. They could benefit from formal religious studies training. Mr. Mathewes points to the problem of "reductionist" models that minimize the influence of religion. He cites the "economics and religion" statistical approach that provides interesting information, but is by no means the total picture. He also offers concerns about evolutionary psychology, which tends to reduce the religion as incidental to some genetic function. As he put it, "Dogma couched in scientific terms is still dogma." The philosophical assumptions underlying the science must be questioned.

Some of the hindrances we face include the fact that religious studies tends to be "path dependent". Our scholars tend to be too timid or too conservative in offering new views. The question we must ask ourselves is: What is going on in the real world that affects our field? Parochialism can render us irrelevant, and we need to look at what's happening outside our field.

We also need to know the history of our fields. There tends to be a systematic forgetting of the past. Work needs to be done in the historiography of religion.

We need to educate ourselves beyond our specialty. It is important to be able to explain ourselves to others who have different points of view.

My own thoughts on this--what Mr. Mathewes is saying is certainly true. However, as a "liberal arts" scholar of religion, what he is suggesting has always been my point of view--religion is the most interdisciplinary field out of all the humanities. It seems like this might be more of a revelation for people who have engaged specifically in the study of a specific Christian theology or Church. My own problem with the field is that there aren't too many opportunities for folks like myself. Mr. Mathewes rightly notes that there are too many Ph.D.s and not enough opportunities. If one does not have a specific interest in the ministry or clergy of a specific religion (or denomination), there's not much application outside of strict teaching and research. I tend to be more of a comparative religionist--I like them all, and see problems with all of them at times, and my personal view tends to be Hindu (though I was raised Catholic, and have experience with occult religions like Wicca and Thelema). I have more in common with Joseph Campbell than I do with any prominent theologian. There aren't too many places for people like me, and I'm forced to work in another field (library science) to piece together a living. It's hard to tell students with similar interests that they should go on in the field, even though I fully believe in "following your bliss". One has to balance personal satisfaction with economic realities, unfortunately. I take the point of view that university scholarship should take place in the literal sense of the word "schola", meaning "leisure"--i.e.,one should not study for vocational reasons. But that is not the view of the majority of people who go to college, and it is not unreasonable to expect to find employment once one's education is finished.But this is not just an R.S. problem, it's a wider problem in the Humanities.