Science under Siege in the Academic Study of Religion

In this collection of essays, distinguished scholar Donald Wiebe works towards restoring the scientific credibility of the study of religion in the modern research university.

This book brings together some of Wiebe’s landmark essays on theory and method in the study of religion with previously unpublished work on the latest developments of the research landscape in the field. Based on an understanding of the modern university as an institution designed to gain disinterested knowledge about the world, including religions, Wiebe criticizes increasingly widespread approaches in the field of religious studies that promote religious, moral, or political agendas. He argues that, by adopting non-epistemic objectives, these approaches betray the mandate of the modern university and erode the scientific and intellectual respectability of the academic field of religious studies.

In a next step, Wiebe makes a powerful case for understanding the study of religion as a search for knowledge about the natural determinants of religious thought and behavior that uses the tools of the social and natural sciences. By conducting research that is grounded in these methodologies, he argues, scholars can produce transculturally accepted empirical, historical, and explanatory knowledge about religion(s) and return the study of religion to a scientifically sound undertaking.