The Insider/Outsider problem is one of the most perennial problems in the academic study of religion. It may sound boring at first, but think about it for just a minute and you will realise that this distinction, relating to where scholars position themselves relating to the subject matter (whatever that may be), permeates not only almost every aspect of academia, but has profound implications for each and every one of us conducts ourselves in relationship with the other people we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Dr George Chryssides joins Chris this week to discuss this fascinating issue.

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Does one have to be a member of a community for your testimony about that community to be valid? Or does your membership of the community invalidate your objectivity? It is certainly the opinion of a large minority within the academic study of religion that, in the words of Andrew Walls, ‘religion can best understand religion’.  For Walls ‘”religious commitment” provides the best “entrance gate” for understanding religion because “it at least presupposes the reality of the subject matter”‘ (in Cox, 2006:154). However, from another perspective a personal religious commitment, whether to the group being studied or another group, can be seen as a hindrance to seeing the social reality of the matter at hand.

Does an academic training permanently exclude you from insider status regardless of your personal ‘beliefs’ or sense of belonging? There is always a danger when scholars attempt to impute or discern ‘meaning’ that perhaps it is they, and not the informant who is seeking it. (Day, 2010:16). According to Cox, classical phenomenologists were well aware of the ‘otherwise insurmountable distance between the scholar of religion and religious adherents’ (2006:212), yet believed that they had found an answer to this problem (for an in depth discussion of the phenomenology of religion, see James Cox’s interview, and Jonathan Tuckett’s “What is Phenomenology?“). A key phenomenological dictum, and one which holds throughout many scholars’ approaches to studying religion, is that ‘the question of [the truth of a religion...] is a question not asked, not a question left undecided’ (Ninian Smart, in Cox 2006:162). However, ‘by performing the phenomenological bracketing to eliminate every type of prejudice, the scholar of religion paradoxically remains in control of knowledge and thereby dictates the rules for interpreting religious phenomena’ (Cox, 2006:215). And as Robert Segal has stated, ‘the scholar of religion can never appreciate the reality of religion for believers without endorsing the very assumptions that motivate the devotee’s faith’ (1983:108). These questions and many more form part of the theoretical backdrop for this interview with Dr Chryssides.

George D. Chryssides is Honorary Research Fellow in Contemporary Religion at the University of Birmingham. He studied philosophy and theology at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and has taught in several British universities, becoming Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton in 2001. He has a particular interest in new religious movements, on which he has published extensively. Recent publications include Christians in the Twenty-First Century (with Margaret Z Wilkins), published by Equinox (2010). His second edition of Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements is also out, dated 2012.

His website, www.religion21.com, includes several resources which may be useful, including “From Jesus Christ to Father Christmas — an attempt to define the scope and subject-matter of Christianity”. You may also wish to see Russell T. McCutcheon’s edited volume The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion.

This interview was recorded in September 2011 at the British Association for the Study of Religions‘ Annual Conference, hosted by Durham University.

References:

Cox, James L. 2006. A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion: Key Figures, Formative Influences and Subsequent Debates. Continuum
Day, Abby, 2010. “Propositions and performativity: Relocating belief to the social”, Culture and Religion, 11(1), pp.9-30.
Segal, Robert A. 1983. “In Defense of Reductionism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 51 (March 1983), pp. 97-124.

Animism is often taken as referring to worldviews in which spirits are to be found not only in humans, but potentially in animals, in plants, in mountains and even natural forces like the wind. It was of central importance in early anthropological conceptions of religion, most notably in the work of E. B. Tylor. More recently, however, Graham Harvey has challenged the traditional conception of animism, seeking to understand it as “relational epistemologies and ontologies”; in other words, it is a way of living in a community of persons, most of whom are other-than-human.

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Dr Graham Harvey has been Reader in Religious Studies at the Open University since 1993, and is also the President Elect of our sponsors, the British Association for the Study of Religions. Other than Animism, his work has covered a wide range of subjects, from Judaism, Paganism, Indigenous Religions and Shamanism.

His most important publication on animism is his 2005 book Animism: Respecting the Living World. It is supported by www.animism.org.uk, which features essays, articles and interviews which expand on the material in this podcast.

His paper, ‘Animals, Animists and Academics’, from Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 41.1 (2006), is available to download here, if you have University access.

If not, (or, indeed, as well,) “Animism rather than Shamanism”, from Spirit Possession and Trance : New Interdisciplinary Perspectives (edited by Bettina Schmidt and Lucy Huskinson, Continuum 2010) is available here.

Out of necessity this interview was not recorded on our normal equipment, and we apologise for the poorer quality of the sound this week. You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes, and subscribe to receive our weekly interviews.

The relationship between Theology and Religious Studies  is not a simple one. David Ford writes that at its broadest, theology is thinking about questions raised by and about religions (2000:3). These questions are largely directed towards notions of transcendence (typically gods), incorporate doctrinal issues and are “essentially a second-order activity arising from ‘faith’ and interpreting faith” (Whaling, 1999:228-229). Essentially, theology is thinking about religion from within religion – although when most people refer to “Theology”, what they mean is “Christian Theology”.

It is generally accepted – at least as far as most academics are concerned – that there is a distinct difference between religious studies and theology. This is succinctly summarised by Ninian Smart’s statement that “historical and structural enquiries, such as sociology, phenomenology, etc., [...] are the proper province of [the study of] Religion, and the use of such materials for Expressive ends [...is] the doing of Theology” (in Wiebe, 1999:55).

As you shall see from this interview, however, things are much more complicated, and Professor Wiebe is particularly qualified to present his own take on the relationship between these two distinct disciplines. His primary areas of research interest are philosophy of the social sciences, epistemology, philosophy of religion, the history of the academic and scientific study of religion, and method and theory in the study of religion. He is the author of a number of books, including Religion and Truth: Towards and Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion (1981), The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought (1991), and, of particular relevance to this interview, The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (1999). In 1985 Professor Wiebe, with Luther H. Martin and E. Thomas Lawson, founded the North American Association for the Study of Religion, which became affiliated to the IAHR in 1990; he twice served as President of that Association (1986-87, 1991-92).

This interview was recorded at the European Association for the Study of Religions‘ Annual Conference in Budapest in September 2011, where Professor Wiebe also presented a particularly relevant paper with his colleague Luther H. Martin, entitled “Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion”. Out of necessity it was not recorded on our normal equipment, and we apologise for the poorer quality of the sound this week.

References:

Ford, David F., 2000 [1999]. Theology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Whaling, Frank, 1999. “Theological Approaches” in Peter Connoly (ed.), Approaches to the Study of Religion. London: Cassell, pp. 226-274.

Wiebe, Donald, 1999. The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy. New York: St Martin’s Press.

You can also download this interview, and subscribe to receive our weekly podcast, on iTunes.

In this interview with David, Carole M. Cusack (Associate Professor in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney) answers these questions and more, exploring her notion of “Invented Religions” and introducing the listener to a wide variety of contemporary and unusual forms of religion. Discussion flows through a range of topics – from Discordianism and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to Scientology, Jediism and the New Atheism – and demonstrates how the works of authors such as Thomas Pynchon and Robert A. Heinlein can be transformed by others and take on a life of their own. In her own words, “This is a fiction so good it should be true…”

[N.B., Carole asked me to let you know that when she said that George Adamski founded the Aetherius Society, she meant George King. Both Georges encountered Venusians in 1954, but Adamski was in the US and King in the UK. A forgivable error, I'm sure.]

Carole Cusack trained as a medievalist and her doctorate was published as Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998). Since the late 1990s she has taught in contemporary religious trends, publishing on pilgrimage and tourism, modern Pagan religions, new religious movements, the interface between religion and politics, and religion and popular culture. She is the author of The Essence of Buddhism (Lansdowne, 2001), Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate, 2010), and The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), 2011.

She has published in a number of edited volumes, and is the editor (with Christopher Hartney) of Religion and Retributive Logic: Essays in Honour of Garry W. Trompf (Brill, 2010). With Christopher Hartney (University of Sydney) she is editor of the Journal of Religious History (Wiley) and with Liselotte Frisk (Dalarna University) she is editor of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions (Equinox). She serves on the Editorial Boards of the journal Literature & Aesthetics, and of the Sophia Monograph Series (Springer).

View Carole’s page on Academia.edu. Of particular relevance to the topic of this interview is her article
Science Fiction as Scripture: Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and the Church of All Worlds in Christopher Hartney, Alex Norman, and Carole M. Cusack (eds), Creative Fantasy and the Religious Imagination, special issue of Literature & Aesthetics, Vol. 19, No. 2, SSLA, 2009, pp. 72-91. The full text is available here if you have an Academia.edu account (and if you don’t have an Academia.edu account, and are looking to increase your networking and ability to access the most up-to-date research in your area, we suggest that you get one now!).

If you have institutional access to the International Journal for the Study of New Religions, you may also find the following article of interest: Discordian Magic: Paganism, the Chaos Paradigm and the Power of Parody, International Journal for the Study of New Religions, Vol. 2, No. 1, May 2011.

Abstract:

Discordianism, founded in 1957 and generally regarded as a “parody religion,” has only recently received scholarly consideration as a valid religious expression within modern Paganism (Cusack 2010). Yet ritual practice within Discordianism remains largely unexamined; Hugh Urban’s brief discussion of Discordian magical workings as a sub-category of Chaos Magic is the extent of academic discussion of the subject to date (Urban 2006). This article elaborates on Urban’s tantalising classification of Discordian magic. A brief history of Discordianism is sketched; then ritual and magic in the Discordian tradition is explored through an examination of key texts, including Malaclypse the Younger’s Principia Discordia (1965), and Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975). Similarities between Chaos Magic and Discordianism are noted, and an analysis of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), a magical order founded by British performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and others in 1981, elucidates the relationship between Chaos Magic and Discordian magic. It is argued that the essentially unorganised nature of Chaos Magic and Discordianism, and the trenchant resistance of both to any form of “orthodoxy,” justifies classifying Discordian magic as a form of Chaos Magic. Chaos magicians and Discordians both have a deconstructive and monistic worldview, in which binary oppositions collapse into undifferentiated oneness, and neither conformity of belief nor unity of practice is required to be an “authentic” Discordian or Chaote.

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Armin W. Geertz is Professor in the History of Religions, Director of the Religion, Cognition and Culture Research Unit (RCC) and MINDLab Coordinator of the Cognition and Culture Project at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is currently President Elect of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR). His many publications include New Approaches to the Study of Religion (edited with Peter Antes and Randi R. Warne, Berlin, 2004, two volumes) and Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture (Equinox Publishing, forthcoming 2012).

Professor Geertz’ chapter from New Approaches on the cognitive study of religion can be viewed here. Also consider Religion is natural, atheism is not: On why everybody is both right and wrong, (Religion 40/3, 2010) in which he denies the claim that “New Atheism” challenges the assumption of the naturalness of religion by cognitive approaches. Brain, Body and Culture: A Biocultural Theory of Religion (Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 22/4, 2010) presents a model in which cognitive approaches are combined with their bodily and cultural context.

This interview was recorded at the European Association for the Study of Religions‘ Annual Conference in Budapest in September 2011. Out of necessity it was not recorded on our normal equipment, and we apologise for the poorer quality of the sound this week.

You can also download this interview, and subscribe to receive our weekly podcast, on iTunes. This interview also formed the basis for Jonathan Tuckett’s “What is Phenomenology?“, published by the Religious Studies Project.

James Cox is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies in the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. In 1999, he was appointed Reader in Religious Studies in the University of Edinburgh and was awarded a Personal Chair in 2006. From 1993 to 1998, he directed the University of Edinburgh’s African Christianity Project which included eight African universities in southern and western Africa. He has held prior academic posts at the University of Zimbabwe, Westminster College, Oxford and Alaska Pacific University. In 2009, he was Visiting Professor of Religion in the University of Sydney. Professor Cox is de Carle Distinguished Lecturer in the University of Otago in Dunedin for 2012. During his time at Otago he is completing a book to be published by Equinox in late 2012 under the title, ‘Inventions of God in Indigenous Societies’.

His latest and most complete work on the subject is An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion (2010), published by Continuum. A review which questions his relating phenomenological and cognitive approaches by Paul Tremlett in Culture and Religion 11/4 (2010) is available here. Also recommended is his earlier A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion (2006), also published by Continuum. His 2008 article from DISCUS, the BASR journal, “Community Mastery of the Spirits as an African Form of Shamanism” applies the phenomenological method to certain African practices in order to argue for Shamanism as a universal  category.

If you were interested in what Professor Cox had to say about the development of Religious Studies more broadly, I heartily recommend From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions (Ashgate, 2007). It is simultaneously an account of colonial contact with indigenous religions, a history of how scholars have conceptualised religion, and an attempt to create a new definition of “religion”.