One of the most amazing developments
in the world of the study of religion
in the last 200 years,
has been the emergence of
a new discipline beside theology and
divinity called Religious Studies.
Religious studies has
its own methods, its own
aims, its own structure
but it also has its own history.
And Tara tell us
about the beginnings of Religious Studies.
>> Okay so Religious Studies
has some unusual beginnings really.
I think we could probably argue
that the idea of studying religion
in itself, as a thing to study it surely
starts quite early even Spinoza
we could say is the beginning of sort of
an awareness of religion
being a topic a subject that should
be dissected and thought
about in a certain kind of way.
But the way I like to think
about the beginning of Religious Studies
as a historical event
is through the language
of love affairs because
largely it is these thinkers who began
to work around a topic in
this way in the way that we look out
in religious studies they were
experiencing a kind of
a rapture... [laughs]
I have to say this is a new way of looking at it
alright okay. I think that this will be fair.
Okay so the first love affair
I would say is with human reason.
Of course we might refer to
the Enlightenment as a kind of posture
that people adopt.
But the love affair of the human reason
we see this in the language of Tom Paine and
other thinkers about the idea of
religion being challenged over
and against reason, the idea of
religion being something that
should be analyzed in
the same way that we think
through other problems..
in what's happening.
We also see the love affair of human reason,
something that is presented
as a love affair with
reason over and against ideas
of intolerance and war.
Of course we've got lots of things
going on in the background
in this time period.
So this is not just applying
reason to religion.
It's using - its the love affair
with reason which then has
an object religion which you
then analyzed. Yes absolutely.
So that is how I would describe the first.
The second love affair
is with exotic cultures.
And this is hugely a product of colonialism.
So what happens with colonialism? We have...
We have people discover
cultures that neither they
recognise nor need them too -
and that is really the big one is that we
have people moving over to
different countries that see that cultures
have existed wholly without
any reference to the religions of home,
without Christianity, without
the Bible and that's massively
challenging to the psyche
of a person discovering that culture.
We've got kind of two branches
that come off of this.
We have missions.
So the idea of these cultures being
discovered as idolatrous and
want to save them.
But then we have the love affair
The idea that the
maybe perhaps the study of this tradition is
something that is better
than or greater than what I have
been dissecting the studying
at home and tearing apart.
And it's funny you for the first love affair.
You mentioned Tom Paine.
Exactly contemporaneously with Tom Paine is
Captain James Cook and his
voyages in the Pacific.
And it's fascinating how
every time he arrives at
an island one of
the objects he wants to describe...
Obviously he wants to describe
the geography, whether there's water
there and all that. He describes
the religion and religion
is this exotic thing.
And he just assumes every
tribe has it, every island has it
and he tries to
... it it's it becomes one more bit of
the the strangeness of
these peoples that he has
gotta write down and annotate
Yes absolutely.
The third love affair is has to be with
the historical method and
specifically Biblical criticism.
A lot of people are surprised
when they learn the role that Biblical
criticism as an emerging
practice as an emerging discipline,
played in the essentially secular study
of religion. But it's huge.
Once history begins to
be the litmus test to test
all stories that are happening in
the Bible for what is deemed as truth,
the tides shift and they never come back.
We have... If you
have never come back from that truly.
Because if you Google if you go into
your web search and you
simply type 'historical evidence for...'
Every single hit that is common, that
is massive, is related
to the Bible or to religion. [nervous laughter]
But that said and I I
I I would completely agree with you
that the that the that
the search for
the development of historical myth
historical method in relation
to the Bible is
crucial to
the development of Religious Studies.
We should also note how
historical method has become part and
parcel of who we are because we all love,
we all we all love Sherlock Holmes... >>Yes.
And Sherlock Holmes is the master
of effect to the historical method.
But equally whenever there's a problem
In... you know...
there's some scandal in the government or
some scandal in a company
the methodology that we want to adopt,
to find out what went
wrong is historical methods.
Yes yes it is true.
It is deeply embedded into
our just the philosophy when we wake up in
the morning is there and
it's.. well, I
heard on the radio only a
couple I think was yesterday morning.
They found some impurities in food.
And someone said we've gotta
happening a commission of inquiry.
And it's clear they want to use
the historical method to find out how
this food that went wrong
ended up on a supermarket
>> shelf. Yes absolutely.
And so part of the tracing
the very early beginnings of
Religious Studies and the energy
that fuels religious studies.
That historical method directed
toward the Bible is
a major fire that burns there
because it's the way
that people begin to
think about that literature.
And for the first love we've given
with a patron saint in Tom Paine Yes.
I've suggested that for the second love we
have a patron saint in Captain Cook.
Who who's the hero of the third love? Oh gosh.
I imagine the third love we'd have
several biblical scholars go to war.
German ones specifically, for that title.
Often I look back at Schleiermacher.
I looked back at early thinkers in this way
because they are still
referred to people that have
staying power yeah who would you
say? Well I quoted
Schleiermacher in exactly this
context lecture yesterday morning.
But I was going to go for someone a bit
more...I was
going to say [Julius] Wellhausen.
>>Well Wellhausen would be a classic one for sure.
Because he he takes
stories and he just takes them asunder. And
He's also going out there
and he's looking at archaeology.
He's looking at manuscripts
... hey I just like the guy. >>Yeah.
Our fourth love affair
is with the social sciences.
So the social sciences is a collection.
They emerge.
It feels when you're looking at
the history of the Academy of
Social Sciences seem to
emerge out of out of
nothingness almost all within
40 years of each other.
Everything we categorize
as the social sciences that we know so well
they all come together
and emerge and you see them
happened in the late 19th century
and suddenly they are
whole houses of thought.
And this this language of love
affair works in the sense that
there is a gaping wound in
some of the intellectuals that are
studying religion and they
find something to fill it.
They find that anthropology is a framework to
fill that loss of
a sort of theological
vision of what religion is.
We see the same
with linguistics and economics.
Would you see that in something like
Fraser's Golden Bow? Yes absolutely.
And we see it in Max Vaber.
And we see it in
Edward Tyler and his anthropological studies.
He's very early on.
They're almost giving sermons
that are eviscerating to
their previous scholars of
the mistakes they were making,
the assumptions they were making
with categorizing and defining religion.
We currently in religious studies,
now because those are love affairs and
meaning that they sometimes have blind spots.
As you do. We both learned from them but
also attempt to correct
their mistakes that they had made.
It
early anthropology looks very different than
current anthropology. But that said there
is a there's... some people think
well we can just okay we've identified
this love affairs and we can
just leave them there but are part of us.
Yes they are they
absolutely are it's each of these it's
it's it's so interesting to think how much
the social sciences have
permeated just the
academic study of religion.
We think the way that
I'm describing it to you is
reflective of the social sciences
having input influenced upon me.
So there are ours
to wrestle with now.
Okay well do you know
that is a perfect potted history
of the origins of religious studies.
But I never thought of it in terms of
four love affairs. But it is four love affairs.
Oh right we need uh... we we had Tom Paine,
Captain Cook, Schleiermacher and Wellhausen
And who do we have for the fourth? >>Oh my,
I I think it for
the social sciences I think
we'd have a three-way tie.
>>Okay Three major influencers between
Durkheim, Freud, Weiber >> Durkheim, Freud, Weiber
Tara. Thank you very much