Ubiquitous Inquiry: Peircean Possibilities in the Practice and Study of Religion

This paper draws upon Peirce's philosophy of inquiry to recommend a theory of religious participation as a form of maximally habitual, inhabited inquiry. It argues for conceiving of inquiry as a ubiquitous phenomenon and works from Peirce's writings on 'vital matters' and science to develop distinctions between different forms of inquiry that are, nevertheless, continuous with one another. As a form of inquiry religious participation, even in its most conservative manifestations, is inquisitive and fallible and the paper argues that scholars of religion would do well to reject conceptions of religion that excise religion and religious people from larger theories of fallible inquiry.