Response to Gavin Flood, “Ref lections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religion”

Gavin Flood calls for religious studies to become more open to "religiously based standpoints," in other words, to "traditions' self-inquiry within a framework of rational discourse." His paper offers three main reasons for this. The first reason is that such standpoints greatly facilitate comparison, because, unlike reductive accounts of religion, which leave nothing substantive left to compare, and area-specific accounts, which are reluctant to hypothesize beyond their boundaries, religiously based standpoints seek to translate their "traditions' semantic density" into a language that can "communicate and illuminate" other traditions. Religious studies, Flood notes, might ideally be akin to a "tent of meeting," a place where religious traditions can encounter one another, be corrected and emended in dialogue with one another and with the social scientific study of religion, and inform a broader public about such concerns as the nature of the "human self" or the "human good." The second reason is that by excluding religiously based standpoints, the study of religion misses something crucial about the material it is claiming to be theorizing about. As Flood puts it, "external accounts" (focused on cause and explanation) are "often antithetical to the internal claims of traditions," and are therefore, on Flood's reasoning, incomplete. The third reason is that "arguments from within traditions have broad implications for metaphysics, ethics, and cultural politics." Only by taking such arguments seriously, contends Flood, will religious studies "survive into the future."

The terms in which Flood articulates his desiderata are unfortunately polarized in the usual way. Religious studies is to accept theology as long as theology (as both a second-order and, potentially, a third-order discourse) heeds the standards of "rational discourse." But this merely presumes, without interrogation, precisely the concept of rationality or shared space that is at issue among both those who want theology included and those who argue for its exclusion. Neither Flood's three reasons for admitting religiously based standpoints to religious studies nor his conception of religion as a culturally specific form of human practice and reasoning organized around sacred texts offer theorists in religion anything new with which to tackle the problem. In fact, Flood's program bears more than a passing resemblance to Mircea Eliade's 1969 manifesto for the field "A New Humanism," in which Eliade similarly calls for a phenomenologically oriented dialogue between traditions focused on their "central values," accessed by attending to the meaning of religious texts (their "secret message") and not just their history, or "sociological, economic, or political contexts" (1999: 98, 95). Eliade, too, sees such dialogue in world-historical terms, contending that the scholar who "approaches [religious expressions] from within" can play a key role in the development of "a new humanism, on a world-wide scale" (1999: 96). And Eliade, too, marks his place in the field through a critique of reduction and an embrace of both homo religiosus and his cultural specificity (1999: 100). This is not the place to rehearse either the influence of this program or its many critiques. But when Flood "detects," "rising out of the ashes of the phenomenology of religion," a "new form of hermeneutical phenomenology that has passed through the fires of postmodern critique," it is not clear what he is referring to—which postmodern critique he has internalized, which aspect of the phenomenology of religion he rejects.

Perhaps the upshot for Flood lies in the sense of urgency with which his essay begins: that there is an especial reason now to revisit the treatment of "world faiths" in the study of religion since religion today is "of fundamental public concern . . . central to global politics, cultural or identity politics, ethics, and the socio-economic processes of late modernity." This is quite a swath, even wider, one might add, than Eliade's own sense of the necessity in his "historical moment" to transcend "cultural provincialism" and encounter others "on their own plane of reference" (1999: 96–97). One wonders what particular fundamental public matters Flood most has in mind here. Post 9-11 militant Islam and the rise of evangelical influence in US policy are the two obvious candidates, but it is impossible to know and unclear why Flood did not say more about this if in fact it is a key dimension of his program. The point, I take it, is that even if the study of religion had decided on theoretical grounds to exclude theology from the practice of scholarship (hardly a settled matter, of course—indeed, many would argue that theology and tradition-specific inquiry are a thriving part of the field), there are reasons to re-admit it having to do with the times in which we live. This is not exactly what Flood says. He focuses largely on the theoretical benefits to the study of religion of a lively and flourishing theology in its midst. Nevertheless, on my reading, Flood's account of these theoretical benefits is itself driven by a practical and cultural aim not only to let theology in (to the academic study of religion) but also to let theology out (into the public sphere), where it can use its tradition-based inquiry, properly purged ("corrected") of all first-order accretions, to affect current events. Religious studies would thereby act as the host that makes possible this two-way transaction (one might, in a sour mood, call it an operation of theology laundering).

What I want to contest, though, is not so much this ambition to re-empower religious studies, via theology, to comment on "the nature of the world," "the human good," or "global politics" but, returning to the matter of the essay's polarized terms, the very conception of theology as a privileged discourse in the first place, especially useful (the standpoint of Flood) or especially deleterious (the standpoint of his imagined opponents). On the one hand, I know of no compelling reasons to exclude theology from the study of religion. In the worst case scenario, theology might name the systematic elaboration by insiders of principles, claims, and world-conquering plots that are incontestable and unavailable for scrutiny by outsiders or by rational methods. But it might just as easily name the interrogation and critique of such principles, claims, and plots. What makes something theological? The presence of interlocutors who hold the position they are analyzing to be true (and true in which senses)? The appeal to extra-historical sources (and what is to count as extra historical)? The interest in what things mean in addition to how and for whom they mean things? Theology is too semantically and conceptually indeterminate; its genealogy, like that of so many other terms of art in scholarship, too fascinatingly checkered. One could outlaw it, but it would always be unclear just what one was outlawing and too costly to police the shifting borders. Better by far, in my view, to be a libertarian about such things as much as possible, if only to avoid the spectre of some bureaucratic body with a blunt instrument deciding what one shall and shall not come into contact with in one's scholarly endeavors.

On the other hand, I do not think the inclusion of theology in the study of religion should be a matter of any fanfare either. What we should be (and in many cases are) vigorously debating instead are more precisely those things that make the term theology both threatening and appealing: as above, questions concerning conceptions of truth, partisanship and advocacy, history and historical perspective, language and culture, periodization and geo-political markers, understanding and critique, borders and universals (to name just a few topoi). These intellectual matters, along with the question of the role of scholarly work in the public square, cut across the contemporary humanities and human sciences, and there is no reason to place the study of religion outside such wider discussions or to see it as suffering unique problems. It is the case, to be sure, that what is at issue in these debates, inter alia, is the identification of minimum scholarly standards on the basis of which the academy can distinguish between adequate and inadequate forms (and fora) of work. And it is also the case that each discipline, and even each subdiscipline or specialty, will do this slightly differently. But the focus on theology in the study of religion is distorting: it masks the problems of theory and method that the field shares with other disciplines, problems that survive either the exclusion or the inclusion of theology; it leads to a bunker mentality wherein the problems (and promises) of the field are cast in the most extravagant terms; it siphons off energy for the pursuit of endlessly repetitive arguments (for and against); and it conjures theology sacrificially as that without which we cannot proceed or with which our proceeding is intrinsically polluted. In short, it gives the discourse of theology grossly disproportionate power for reasons that are almost entirely defensive.

Flood's rationale for the inclusion of religiously based standpoints is a case in point, for just what is religious (and why and how and when and whither) about a standpoint is precisely what is analytically at issue in the study of religion, not what can be presumed and "legitimated" as established. If theology is indeed already in our midst, it can impose on scholars no special tasks or responsibilities. For the same reason Flood's intimation that scholars of religion ought to accompany "sacred texts" into "contemporary political discourse" offends the basic critical posture of the scholar, however engagé. But his essay does enable scholars of religion to revisit how they have typically responded to such calls. For those of us in the field who would like to see just as much theoretical debate on the practices of scholarship as expert discussion (whether philological, theological, or historical) of particular texts and traditions, Flood's paper is a timely reminder that there is still much work to be done to launch such debates in a fruitful way.