Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part one Religion and religious studies: the irony of inheritance
- Part two Major theoretical problems
- 5 Social order or social chaos
- 6 Tradition: the power of constraint
- 7 The text and the world
- 8 On the role of normativity in religious studies
- 9 Translation
- 10 Material religion
- 11 Theology and the study of religion: a relationship
- Part three Methodological variations
- Index
11 - Theology and the study of religion: a relationship
from Part two - Major theoretical problems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part one Religion and religious studies: the irony of inheritance
- Part two Major theoretical problems
- 5 Social order or social chaos
- 6 Tradition: the power of constraint
- 7 The text and the world
- 8 On the role of normativity in religious studies
- 9 Translation
- 10 Material religion
- 11 Theology and the study of religion: a relationship
- Part three Methodological variations
- Index
Summary
Even the most cursory glance at works written by a number of contemporary religious studies scholars reveals a disturbing use of the term “theology,” at least to this theologian. “Theology” is usually (and unfortunately) mentioned in a pejorative sense. Often “theology” appears as the negative foil to the study of religion. Lived religion is opposed to abstract dogmatic propositions; the empirical study of devotional practices is contrasted with the prescriptions of religious authorities far removed from the reality of religion and everyday life; and the value-neutral academic study of religion is preferred to the subjective imposition of theological doctrines.
Given the agreement among some – if not most – religious studies scholars that theology must be decisively disciplined, the presence in this particular book of a chapter on theology and religious studies might raise a few eyebrows, if not elicit a few groans. Is it not the contemporary consensus that the two disciplines, religious studies and theology, are best seen in the disjunctive terms of “either/or”? Is religious studies not premised on its liberation from theology, which is also its ticket to acceptance in the secular academy?
When a theologian cannot recognize herself in descriptions of her discipline by scholars of religion, then she must address the challenge of the disjunction. The aim of this chapter is twofold: first, to set up the historical terms in which the fraught relationship between theology and the study of religion has come to be; and, second, to make a case for a way of doing theology that can be productive for the study of religion.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies , pp. 230 - 254Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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