American Religious Liberalism

Eleven: Liberal Sympathies: Morris Jastrow and the Science of Religion

e l e v e n Liberal Sympathies Morris Jastrow and the Science of Religion Kat h r y n L o f t o n Any review of twenty-­ first-­ century scholarship in the study of religion will find that it is an object around which there seems an inordinate amount of disagreement. From journals to monographs, conferences to classrooms, the question of the “what” in what we study continues to elicit frustration. This essay begins, then, with a contemporary concern: Why do we still seem to be asking whether the study of religion is possible? Is this the reasonable self-­ consciousness of a polymorphic discipline, or the introspective cul-­ de-­ sac of an unstructured field? Even as global po­liti­cal concerns and cognate academic disciplines seem needful of the replies an expertise in religion could supply, there remains a good deal of hemming and hawing on the point, even among those located within proper departments or programs of religious studies in America.1 Whileself-­scrutinypervadesmostartsand sciencesendeavors, schol­ ars of religion—or, rather, scholars un­ der the or­ ga­ ni­ za­ tional and intellectual sway of “religiousstudies”—returntothisuncertaintywithsurpris­ingfrequency. Even af­ter decades of promotional analysis on the subjects of comparative religions , the history of religions, and religious studies, the gathering of those scholars into a collective seems at best an institutional convenience or a tolerated separate peace.2 As scholars contemplate their collaborative coexistence within departmental confines, multiple contemporary volumes appraising the field offer tales for 251 252 Kathryn Lofton the study of religion.3 From this array of companions, handbooks, and encyclopedias , it becomes clear that whether or not individuals understand their role as religionists, the history of the field supplies several arguments supporting the cause. Why study religion? The answers are familiar: because we have; because we should; because it is the natural evolution of the Enlightenment; because we must deconstruct imperialism; because it is fascinating; because it connects the history of humanity in common patterns of behavior; because it drives men to suicide bombing; because it is beautiful; because it is ugly; because it is the highest form; because it articulates our basest needs; and because if we don’t do it, they will. It is easy to find scholars of religion defending the importance of the study of religion un­der any of these principled positions. Yet enthusiasm about these reasons is diffuse, assailed by wariness of a category (religion) and of a category of an academic field (religious studies). This was not always the case. In 1901, philologist, Semitic scholar, and devoted religionist Morris Jastrow Jr. explained confidently that there were “two main objects of the study of religions.” First, he said, the study of religion seeks to determine “the nature, scope, and achievement of the religious spirit in all its vari­ ous manifestations, from the earliest times to the present.” Second, the study of religion will cultivate “that spirit of intense sympathy with one another , which is the basis of mutual esteem, and constitutes an important factor in establishing peace and good-­ will among individuals and among nations.”4 We study religion, Jastrow argued repeatedly then and through­ out his career, because doing so fosters sympathy. He claimed further that we do not study religion merely by spirit, but by a methodical, scientific appraisal of the “nature , scope, and achievement” of those things produced by the “religious spirit.” The study of religion makes manifest its subject through science in the pursuit of mutual sympathy. For such claims, Jastrow was heralded in his times as a scholar of the highest caliber. “Truly Jastrow’s phenomenology is as representative of religious studies as it appears possible for any one scholar to be at the beginning of the twentieth century,” insists one historian of religions.5 Current religionists bearing rapiers approach immediately, seizing upon Jastrow’s celebration of sympathy and his suspicious confidence in science as vestigial opiates of a bygone Orientalism. In the years since Jastrow’s identification of sympathy and science as codependent contributors to and products of the study of religion, scholars of religion have become uneasy with both. This is too flat: we have become kneejerk in our discomfort, rejecting his scientism as an impossible Gilded Age hubris, and his sympathy as a euphemism Liberal Sympathies 253 for a presumptive Edwardian piety, a “progress of the races” from primitive violence and pagan immorality to a patronizing goodwill toward...