Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion

8. A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public intellectual

CHAPTER 8 A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual The moment you publish essays in a society you have entered political life; so if you want not to be political do not write essays or speak out. -Edward Said (1996: 110) To exist socially is to be rhetorically aligned. It is the function of the intellectual as critical rhetor to uncover, bring to light, and probe all such alignments. This is part of the work of ideological analysis. -Frank Lentricchia (1985: 149) The historian of religion cannot suspend his critical faculties, his capacity for disbelief, simply because the materials are "primitive" or religious. -Jonathan Z. Smith (1982: 60) What is the role of religion in public life? This is the common question asked in a number of books that have recently appeared (see, among others, Cady [1993], Carter [1993], Dean [1994], and Marsden [1994, 1997]). Virtually all of their answers involve an increased role for 'faith' and even theology in the intellectual, social, economic, and political affairs of the state. As suggested in the previous chapter, the destabilizations of objectivity and science brought about by postmodern critiques are the means by which these writers return this religious commitment to public life. As George Marsden argues, given that "many of the original reasons" for excluding religious faith from the academy and matters of public concern have, along with other Enlightenment notions, recently come under severe critique, "is it now time to reconsider the rules that shape the most respected academic communities?" (1994: 8-9). Because the question of religion'S role in matters of public concern 125 126 CULTURE CRITICS AND CARETAKERS is clearly of relevance to such theologically inclined commentators on civil life, some readers may wonder precisely why such books ought to attract the attention of the scholar of religion. In other words, what does this recent spate of books have to do with redescribing the public study of religion? Books on the resurgent role of religious commitment in public life ought to attract the interest of the scholar of religion precisely because they are evidence of our failure as public intellectuals. Outside of a small number of readers and writers, few members of our own society-and few members of the academy-know what we do or know who we are, let alone are influenced in their public decisions by our scholarship. When one examines the books written by those who advocate an increased role for religious commitment in the affairs of a nation (most often this turns out to be a particular type of liberal Protestant Christian commitment), it is as if the academic study of religion-even its earlier incarnation as comparative religion-had never existed nor made any significant contribution to the human sciences. It is as if we had nothing to add to public affairs whatsoever and that theologians are the only commentators on 'religion' who have a role to play in helping to decide issues of law, justice, and social welfare. Given the tools that scholars of religion routinely employ in their wide-ranging studies, I believe that we have a vital role to play in public affairs, but, as may be gathered from preceding chapters, it is a role that is rather different from the one championed by many current writers . This chapter is therefore an attempt to outline some of the reasons for our failure as public intellectuals and to argue for a different role for the scholar of religion as public intellectual. A PROBLEM OF OUR OWN MAKING In my reading, the very question, What is the role of religion in public life? has so far been the almost exclusive territory of self-identified religious people staking out claims on how their insights into the ways in which nations ought to work can be put into practice. What we should note from the outset is that the very phrasing of the question already presumes that the issue of what exactly religion is has already been settled ; for virtually no one in this debate presumes that religion is the result of alienation from socioeconomic relations (Marx and Engels), that religion is an illusory practice of wish fulfillment (Freud), that religious practices and stories symbolically deny the contingency and transience of life and human institutions (Bloch 1994), that religion is but one species of anthropomorphism (Guthrie 1993, 1996), or that religion A Default of Critical...