Afterword: Religious Studies: Whither (wither) and why?

Abstract

When I began as a teaching assistant some years ago, a senior professor offered the advice, of religion will flourish so long as they continue to stand on the body of divinity. The image this conjured in my mind was striking, some Christian version of a Purusha-type primordial sacrifice, and though I was disappointed to leam, after some days of diligent and discrete inquiry, that the phrase was, in fact, a somewhat archaic way of denoting the traditional Protestant divinity school curriculum leading to the Bachelor of Divinity degree, the phrase has stuck. Indeed, there are even times when, surveying the current scene, I regretfully entertain the fleeting and unlikely suspicion that it might be so. For the warning posed an issue, fiercely fought in the 1960s, expressed as a choice between seminary studies and university studies, between the teaching of and the teaching about religion, between theological and religious studies. I have a good part of a bookcase in my office filled with publications devoted to such choices, all with respect to a single context: the teaching of religion in a state (public) university. It is a debate, a context, and a history that subsequent generations of teachers in the field are the poorer for not engaging with. It is a debate, a context, and a history that stands behind each of the case studies before us.

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