The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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place, such as the Garden of Eden, but that of the earliest stage of religion – any time and anywhere. Therefore even the ‘historical’ origin was as much recurrent as one-time.

The questions of recurrent origin and of function are connected, and few theories theorize about only the recurrent origin or only the function. Ordinarily, the answer to both questions is a need, which religion arises and serves to fulfill. Theories differ over what that need is. Any theories that do concentrate on only the recurrent origin or on only the function typically either attribute the origin of religion to an accident or else make the function a byproduct. Yet ‘accident’ and ‘byproduct’ really refer to the means, not the ends. Unless religion, however accidental its origin or coincidental its function, serves a need, it surely will not last and surely will not continually re-arise. Still, origin and function are distinct issues, and to argue on the basis of the sheer fulfillment of a need that religion arises in order to fulfill the need is to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

The issues of origin and function can each be divided into two parts: not only why but also how religion arises or functions. In explaining the ends of religion, theories do not thereby automatically explain the means. Some theories explain how religion arises, others how religion functions, others both, still others neither.

For example, the Victorian anthropologist E. B. Tylor (1871), who epitomizes the purportedly nineteenth-century focus on origin, roots religion in observations by ‘primitives’ of, especially, the immobility of the dead and the appearance in dreams and visions of persons residing far away. The ‘why’ of origin is an innate need to explain these observations, which trigger the need rather than implant it. The ‘how’ of origin is the processes of observation, analogy, and generalization. Independently of one another, primitive peoples the world over create religion by these means and for this end. Later stages of humanity do not re-invent religion but instead inherit it from their primitive forebears. They perpetuate religion because it continues to satisfy in them, too, the need to explain observations. Similarly, religion changes not because the need changes but because believers revise their conceptions of God. Religion gives way to science not because the need changes but because science provides a better, or at least more persuasive, means of satisfying it. The ‘why’ of function is the same as the why of origin: a need to explain observations. The ‘how’ of function is the one issue that Tylor ignores.

Truth

Most twentieth-century theorists forswear the issue of the truth of religion as beyond the ken of the social sciences. One exception is the sociologist Peter Berger, who ever since A Rumor of Angels (1969) has been prepared to use his theory to confirm the truth of religion (see Segal 1992: 6–7, 16, 117–18). Most nineteenth-century theorists were not at all reluctant to take a stand on the issue of truth. But they based their assessment on philosophical grounds, not on social scientific ones. Instead of enlisting the origin and function of religion to assess the truth of religion, they assessed the truth on an independent basis and, if anything, let their conclusion about it guide their theorizing about origin and function (see Segal 1992: 15–17). They thereby circumvented the possibility of committing either the genetic fallacy or what I call the functionalist fallacy: arguing that either the origin or the function of religion refutes – necessarily refutes – the truth of it. But Sigmund Freud, in The Future of an Illusion (1964 [1961]), did offer a way of using the origin of religion to argue against the truth of religion without committing the genetic fallacy (see Segal 1989: ch. 7). And the philosopher and psychologist William James tried to use the function, or effect, of religious mysticism to

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argue for the truth of religious mysticism without committing the functionalist fallacy (see Segal 2005).

Theories from religious studies

The key divide in theories of religion is between those theories that hail from the social sciences and those that hail from religious studies itself. Social scientific theories deem the origin and function of religion nonreligious. The need that religion arises to fulfill can be for almost anything. It can be either physical – for example, for food, health, or prosperity – or intangible – for example, for explanation, as for Tylor, or for meaningfulness, as in the highest stage of religion for Max Weber. The need can be on the part of individuals or on the part of society. In fulfilling the need, religion provides the means to a secular end.

By contrast, theories from religious studies deem the origin and function of religion distinctively religious: the need that religion arises to fulfill is for the experience of God. There really is but one theory of religion from religious studies. Adherents to it include F. Max Müller, C. P. Tiele, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Raffaele Pettazzoni, Joachim Wach, and Mircea Eliade.1 For all of these ‘religionists,’ religion arises to provide contact with God. Like many social scientists, many religionists confine themselves to the issues of origin and function and shy away from the issue of truth. Just as social scientists entrust the issue of truth to philosophers, so religionists entrust it to theologians.

For religionists, human beings need contact with God as an end in itself: they need contact with God because they need contact with God. To ask why humans need that contact is to miss the point. An encounter with God may yield peace of mind and other beneficial byproducts, but the need is still for the encounter itself. The need is considered as fundamental as the need for food or water. Without the contact, humans may not die, but they will languish. Because the need is for God, nothing secular can substitute for religion. There may be secular, or seemingly secular, expressions of religion, but there are no secular substitutes for religion. Religionists consider the need for God not only distinctive but also universal. To demonstrate its universality, they point to the presence of religion even among professedly atheistic moderns.

Strictly speaking, there are two versions of the one religionist theory. One is the form just described: religion originates within human beings, who seek contact with God. The exemplar of this form is Eliade, who stresses the yearning for God or, so he prefers, the sacred: ‘But since religious man cannot live except in an atmosphere impregnated with the sacred, we must expect to find a large number of techniques for consecrating space’ (Eliade 1968: 28). Sacred places, or spaces, are one venue for encountering God. Religious sites, such as churches and mosques, are built on those spots where God is believed to have appeared – the assumption being that wherever God has once appeared, that God, even if formally omnipresent, is more likely to appear anew. Sacred times, or time, is the other venue for encountering God. Myths, which describe the creation by God of physical and social phenomena, carry one back to the time of creation, when, it is believed, God was closer at hand than God has been ever since: ‘Now, what took place “in the beginning” was this: the divine or semidivine beings were active on earth… Man desires to recover the active presence of the Gods … [T]he mythical time whose reactualization is periodically attempted is a time sanctified by the divine presence …’ (Eliade 1968: 92).

This version of the religionist theory bypasses the issue of the existence of God. The theory is committed to the existence of only the need for God, not to the existence of God. The

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effusively are Mary Douglas (1966, 1973), Victor Turner (1967, 1968), Clifford Geertz (1973, 1983), Robert Bellah (1970), Peter Berger (1967, 1969), and Erik Erikson (1958, 1969). These social scientists are pitted against classical ones like Tylor (1871), Frazer (1922), Durkheim (1965), Malinowski (1925), Freud (1950), Jung (1938), and Marx (1957).

What is the difference between classical and contemporary social scientists? The difference cannot be over the importance of religion. Classical social scientists considered religion at least as important a phenomenon as any of their contemporary counterparts do. The power of religion is what impelled them to theorize about it. Similarly, the difference cannot be over the utility of religion. While for Frazer, Freud, and Marx, religion is incontestably harmful, for Tylor, Jung, and Durkheim it is most helpful. For these three, religion is one of the best and, for Durkheim, the best means of serving its beneficial functions. Contemporary social scientists grant religion no greater due.

The difference between contemporary and classical social scientists must be over the nature of the function that religion serves. In contrast to classical theorists, for whom the functions of religion are nonreligious, contemporary theorists purportedly take the function of religion to be religious. But do they? Where religionists attribute religion to a yearning for God, contemporary social scientists attribute it to a yearning for, most often, a meaningful life. Contact with God may be one of the best means of providing meaningfulness, but even if it were the sole means, it would still be a means to a nonreligious end. For Douglas, humans need cognitive meaningfulness: they need to organize their experiences. For Turner, Geertz, Bellah, Berger, and Erikson, humans need existential meaningfulness: they need to explain, endure, or justify their experiences. Existential meaningfulness as the function of religion is not even new and goes back to at least Weber, who, to be sure, limits the need for meaningfulness to the ‘higher’ religions (see Weber 1963: Chapters 8–13). But even if this function were new, the need would remain secular. In short, the divide between social scientific theories of religion and the religionist theory remains (see Segal 1989: Chapter 4).

The religionist argument

What is the case for the religionist theory? The case tends to be presented negatively. It appeals to the inadequacy of social scientific theories, which should properly include contemporary theories. All social scientific theories are supposedly inadequate because in deeming the origin and function of religion nonreligious, they necessarily miss the religious nature of religion. Only the religionist theory captures the religious nature of religion.

In actuality, social scientific theories do not miss the religious nature of religion. On the contrary, it is what they mean by religion. The religious nature of religion is the starting point of their theorizing. It is the datum to be theorized about. Far from somehow failing to perceive that adherents pray to God, sacrifice to God, and kill others in the name of God, social scientists take for granted that adherents do so. The question for social scientists is why they do so. The religious nature of religion is the starting point of theorizing. It is not the end point. If social scientists somehow missed, let alone denied, that Christians go to church, sing hymns, take sacraments, read the Bible, and devote their lives to God, and do all of these things because they believe in God, they would be left with nothing to explain. Religiosity, far from being overlooked, is the preoccupation of social scientists.

Against social scientists and others, religionist Eliade, in a famous passage, declares that ‘a religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped as it own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such a

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phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other is false’ (Eliade 1963, p. xiii). But Eliade conflates description with explanation, not to mention description with metaphysics (essence). No social scientist fails to recognize religion as religion. That is why there exists the anthropology of religion, the sociology of religion, the psychology of religion, and the economics of religion. There would be no social scientific theories of religion if the distinctiveness of religion went unrecognized. But the recognition of religion as religion does not mean the explanation of religion as religion.

It is as believers in God that Christians go to church, but it is also, for example, as members of a group that they do so. While acknowledging the difference between a religious group and a team, a family, or a gang, sociologists explain religion in the same way that they explain a team, a family, and a gang: as a group.

At the same time no sociological account of religion can be exhaustive. There is a point at which any sociological account must cease – the point at which a religious group differs from any other kind of group. But to acknowledge a stopping point for sociology is not to dismiss a sociological approach. Sociology can account for religion to whatever extent religion does constitute a group. How fully religion constitutes a group, it is up to sociologists to establish. The more group-like they show religion to be, the more successful their account. Sociologists are to be commended, not condemned, for attempting to account as fully as possible for religion sociologically. Their inevitable inability to account for it entirely sociologically marks the limit, not the failure, of the sociology of religion.

Religionists would reply that the attempt to ‘sociologize’ is inherently futile, for the origin and function of religion can only be religious. Otherwise religion ceases to be religion and becomes society. But this conventional rejoinder, offered like a litany, misses the point. Nobody denies that religion consists of beliefs and practices directed toward God rather than toward the group. But Durkheim, for example, is not thereby barred from matching a believer’s experience of possession by God with an individual’s experience of participation in a group. Durkheim is not barred from asserting that the euphoria and power which individuals feel when they amass precede religious experience, parallel religious experience, and thereby account for religious experience. Participants, thinking their state of mind superhuman, attribute it to possession by God, but Durkheim attributes it to ‘possession’ by the group.

Still, Durkheim is not maintaining that religion originates exclusively through group experience. After all, the group is not itself God, just god-like. The concept of God and attendant practices must still be created.2 Durkheim offers his account of religion as a necessary but not quite a sufficient one. What must yet be accounted for is precisely the step from group to God. But to concede that there is more to an account of religion than the group is not to concede that religiosity is all there is to an account. For Durkheim, religion is to be accounted for sociologically and ‘religionistically’ – with the sociological element predominant. For all other social scientists the same is true: a predominantly sociological, anthropological, psychological, or economic account of religion must be supplemented by a religionist one.

The final religionist rejoinder is the appeal to symmetry. If the effect is religion, the cause must be religionist. There must be a match between cause and effect. A sociological cause can produce only a sociological effect. Explained sociologically, the product is the group, not religion.

This rejoinder, too, misses the point. Of course, there must be symmetry between cause and effect. Causes must be similar enough to their effects to be capable of producing them. But a sociological account of religion does not purport to account for the nonsociological

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aspects of religion, only for the sociological ones. To reply that the sociological aspects are aspects of the group and not of religion is to commit a double fallacy: excluding the middle and begging the question. A sociological account of religion is not an account of something other than religion. It is an account of aspects of religion. To limit religion to its religionist aspects is to beg the question at hand: what is the nature of religion?

To be sure, the claim that sociology can explain anything of religious beliefs and practices might seem to be asserting that sociology can explain something nonsociological. But this concern is misplaced. Sociology takes seemingly nonsociological aspects of religion and transforms them into sociological ones, which it only then accounts for. Durkheim matches atttributes of God – God’s power, God’s overwhelming presence, God’s status as the source of values and institutions – with attributes of the group whose God it is. The symmetry between cause and effect is preserved by sociologizing the effect. A gap remains between the sociological cause and the religious effect: the group is still just a group, not a God. But symmetry is not intended to mean identity.

To take an example from another field, Freud contends that a believer’s relationship to the believer’s father matches the believer’s relationship to God. He contends that believers’ feelings toward their fathers precede their feelings toward God, parallel those feelings, and therefore cause the feelings. But he proposes only a necessary, if also largely sufficient, cause of religion. No more than Durkheim does he propose, to use a redundancy, an altogether sufficient one. What must still be supplied is the step from father to God. The father for Freud, like the group for Durkheim, is God-like but not God. God may be human-like, but no human being is omnipotent, omniscient, or immortal. God is ‘father’ of the whole world, not just of a family. The adult conception of God may derive from a child’s ‘idolization’ of the child’s own father, but the conception transforms a God-like figure into a God. Even when Freud brashly declares that ‘at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father’ (Freud 1950: 147), he is still distinguishing a father from an exalted, deified father. The closer the link that Freud draws between father and God, the more convincing is his account, but he, like Durkheim and all other social scientists, takes for granted a limit to the link, and does so even while ever trying to tighten that link. Again, symmetry does not mean identity.

The mind–body analogy

One way of exposing the fallacy in the religionist argument that only identity between cause and effect can account for the effect is to appeal to the grand philosophical issue of the relationship between the mind and the body. There are four possible relationships. (1) Only mind exists, and the body (matter) is an illusion (idealism). (2) Only the body exists, and the mind (spirit) is an illusion (materialism, or reductionism). (3) Both mind and body, spirit and matter, exist, but they operate independently of each other (parallelism). (4) Both mind and body, spirit and matter, exist, and either one causally affects the other (interactionism). Alternatively, the two causally affect each other.

Religionists never go so far as to espouse the equivalent of idealism: claiming that only religiosity exists and that the mind, society, and culture are illusory. Rather, they assume as their options the equivalents of either parallelism or materialism/reductionism. Parallelism clearly constitutes no threat, for it preserves religiosity. Religionists assume that the sole threat comes from materialism/reductionism, which they seek to counter by arguing that religion is other than mind, society, and culture. They often assume – falsely – that the social sciences are outright materialistic.

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Religionists overlook the interactionist option. Interactionism grants religion partial autonomy but not immunity. On the one hand it does not, like reductionism, dissolve religion into sheer mind, society, or culture.3 On the other hand it does not, like parallelism, preclude the impact of the mind, society, or culture on religion.

Nemeses of religionists like Durkheim, Freud, and Marx espouse interactionism rather than, as defined here, reductionism or, obviously, parallelism. They seek to account for religion, not to deny (reductionism) or to isolate (parallelism) it. If they denied religion (reductionism), they would have nothing to account for. If they isolated religion (parallelism), they would be unable to account for it. Because Durkheim, Freud, and Marx no more reduce religion entirely to society, mind, or economy than philosophical interactionists reduce the mind entirely to the body, they do not claim to be accounting wholly for it. They claim only to be accounting significantly for it. They claim that one cannot account for religion apart from society, mind, or economy. Furthermore, the interactionism is for them two-way: religion, here as an independent variable, accounts considerably for society, mind, and the economy, just as society, mind, and the economy account considerably for religion.

Postmodernism

A postmodern approach to religion might seem to offer religionists solace by its opposition to generalizations and therefore to theorizing, but in fact it does not. Religionists theorize as much as social scientists. Contrary to postmodernists, both sides vaunt precisely the universality of their formulations. Contrary to both religionists and social scientists, postmodernists insist that theories cannot apply universally, not merely that they may not – a point scarcely denied by theorists on either side.

The postmodern refutation of theory takes several forms. One form is the uncovering of the origin – the historical, one-time origin – of theories. The assumption is that a theory does not merely arise in a specific time and place but is bound by that time and space. Where, for most of us, testing may show that a theory is in fact limited in its applicability, postmodernists assume a priori that any theory is so limited, and on the grounds that it originates in a specific time and place. But how can the sheer origin of a theory undermine – necessarily undermine

– the theory? The argument blatantly commits the genetic fallacy. Reducing the scope of theories to the occasion of their origin fails to allow theorists any capacity to think. It reduces theorists to mere mirrors of their times. It conflates discovery with invention, creativity with construction. For an example of this variety of the postmodern attack on theory, see many of the contributions to Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Taylor 1999).

Another form of the postmodern attack on theory comes from Derrida. Here theories are undermined by the presence of contrary currents in the texts that present the theories. The most brilliant application of Derridean deconstructionism to theories of religion is Tomoko Masuzawa’s In Search of Dreamtime (1993), the subtitle of which is The Quest for the Origin of Religion. Masuzawa assumes that classical theories of religion sought above all the historical, one-time origin of religion. She lumps religionist theories with social scientific ones and takes as her prime targets Durkheim, Freud, Eliade, and Müller. Against them, she argues that their own texts undermine their intentions. Like Pirandello’s characters, their texts take on a life of their own.

For example, Durkheim’s definition of the sacred as the ideal society is supposedly undermined by the continual appearance in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life of another definition: the sacred as the opposite of the profane. Freud’s attribution, in Totem

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and Taboo, of the origin of religion to the sons’ rebellion against their tyrannical father is supposedly undercut by Freud’s own characterization of this would-be historical deed as fantasy. Contemporary theorists of religion, epitomized by Eliade, may reject the quest for the origin of religion as unsolvable, but we are told that they remain obsessed with believers’ own quest for the origin of everything, including religion. That quest is in turn undone by the locating of the origin of everything outside history, in mythic time, and is undone still more by the attempt through myth to override history by recovering the past, by making the past present.

Masuzawa’s argument is tenuous. As noted, classical theorists sought the recurrent more than the historical origin of religion. Declares Durkheim near the outset of his Elementary Forms:

The study which we are undertaking is therefore a way of taking up again, but under new conditions, the old problem of the origin of religion. To be sure, if by origin we are to understand the very first beginning, the question has nothing scientific about it, and should be resolutely discarded. There was no given moment when religion began to exist, and there is consequently no need of finding a means of transporting ourselves thither in thought … But the problem which we raise is quite another one. What we want to do is to find a means of discerning the ever-present causes upon which the most essential forms of religious thought and practice depend.

(Durkheim 1965: 20)

Even Freud, who in Totem and Taboo comes closest to seeking the historical origin of religion, seeks only the first stage of religion. Moreover, classical theorists, as noted, were as much after the function of religion as after the origin, recurrent or historical. Contemporary theorists are no different.

The presence in theories of inconsistencies argues for the provisional state of the theorizing, not for any systematic undermining of the effort. Furthermore, far more egregious inconsistencies in these theories have long been recognized. In Durkheim, sometimes society is the recurrent source of religion, but sometimes religion is the recurrent source of society. Freud himself sheepishly recognizes the seeming inconsistency between his account of religion in Totem and Taboo and his account of it in The Future of an Illusion. There may be irony, but there is no inconsistency in Eliade’s abandonment of the quest for the historical origin of religion on the one hand and his interpretation of myth as a return to the historical, or prehistorical, origin of everything in the world on the other.

Masuzawa’s approach is postmodern in the conclusion she draws: that the quest for historical origin, for her the key concern of at least classical theorizing, must be abandoned, in which case so presumably must theorizing itself, at least of a classical variety. The rejection of historical origin is meant to be part of the deconstruction of epistemological foundations. The study of religion must acknowledge its fault lines.

But even suppose that all classical theorists outright failed in a common quest for the historical origin of religion. What would follow? That subsequent theorists dare not try? Does the failure of even all quests to date doom all future ones? Does the quest for the historical origin of religion become impossible rather than merely difficult and become improper as well as impossible?

The final postmodern rejection of theory derives from Foucault. Here the political end to which theories are put is sought – as if the use of a theory refutes the theory. This tactic

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commits what I dub the functionalist fallacy – the counterpart to the genetic fallacy. The fullest application of a Foucauldian analysis of religion is Russell McCutcheon’s Manufacturing Religion (1996). Rather than attacking all theories of religion like Masuzawa, McCutcheon attacks only the religionist theory. There is nothing postmodern in much of his attack, which concentrates on Eliade. Cataloguing standard objections, McCutcheon argues that Eliade attributes religion exclusively to a distinctively religious need, thereby dismisses nonreligious needs as irrelevant, and thereby isolates religion from the rest of life. McCutcheon is less Foucauldian than Marxist when he argues that religion arises to sanction oppression, as in using a myth of the origin of social inequality to justify the perpetuation of the inequality.

McCutcheon follows Foucault in targeting less religion than the religionist theory, or ‘discourse,’ and targeting it for its political effects. He objects to Eliade’s theory not simply because Eliade ignores the nonreligious origin and function of religion but even more because, in so doing, Eliade supposedly sanctions whatever political effect religion in fact has. McCutcheon denies that the political consequence is unintended. Citing Eliade’s own welldocumented alliance with the fascistic Romanian Iron Guard, he asserts that the conception of religion as otherworldly is a calculated method of masking how worldly in both origin and function religion really is. The religionist discourse ‘manfactures’ the theory of religion not merely to give religiosity autonomy, as has conventionally been argued, but to deflect attention away from the political origin and function of religion. McCutcheon even suggests that religionist theorists manufacture religion to benefit themselves: to give themselves a discipline and, with it, jobs. Knowledge is power, as Sophists back in fifth-century Athens proclaimed.

As delightfully iconoclastic as McCutcheon’s claim is, he falls far short of proving it. One must do more than show that religion has a political side, and McCutcheon himself offers only a handful of examples. One must also show that religion has no religionist side, lest, as for even reductionists, the religionist theory still holds, albeit less than monopolistically. To do so, McCutcheon must account for all of religion nonreligiously. Showing who benefits from religion hardly suffices, for there can be multiple effects of religion, which, like much else in life, can be overdetermined. And the nonreligious effects can surely, as for Weber and other theorists, be coincidental rather than intentional. In trying to replace rather than to supplement a religionist account of religion with a political one, McCutcheon thus ventures beyond both classical and contemporary social scientific theorists, whose accounts of religion are, again, proffered as less than sufficient. Indeed, McCutcheon’s one-sided view ventures beyond that of even some religionists, not all of whom insist, like Eliade, that religion is exclusively religionist in origin and function.

In postmodern fashion, McCutcheon ties his repudiation of the religionist theory to an opposition to theorizing itself. Somehow the attribution of religion to a spiritual need makes all religions the same – the prerequisite for a theory. Yet somehow the attribution of religion to a political need makes all religions different – and thereby impervious to generalization. When McCutcheon insists on ‘contextualizing’ religion, he means rooting religion not simply in political and other material conditions generally but in the material conditions particular to each religion. Yet his mechanical quest for the material beneficiary of each religion seemingly makes all religions the same. In place of the ‘totalizing’ religionist theory, he puts an equally totalizing materialist theory.

Postmodern criticisms of theories of religion arise in conspicuous ignorance of contemporary philosophy of social science and the sociology of natural science. Absent is the consideration of logical problems like those of induction, falsification, and relativism. Absent is the mention

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of the various alternatives proposed to the standard models of scientific explanation worked out by, above all, Carl Hempel, who himself allows for merely probabilistic explanations. Postmodernism dismisses theorizing per se, and on the most illogical of grounds, of which the worst is the declaration that ‘we live in a postmodern world.’

In postmodern approaches to religion, one never encounters discussions of the ramifications of, above all, radical, contemporary sociology of science. For example, the Edinburgh ‘strong programme’ pioneered by David Bloor (1991), Barry Barnes, and Steven Shapin offers a comprehensive rationale for the activity that should make postmodernists salivate: the contextualizing of theories. According to the program, the holding of all beliefs, true and rational ones no less than false and irrational ones, is to be accounted for sociologically rather than intellectually. Where McCutcheon and the contributors to Critical Terms either ignore the issue of truth, limiting themselves to the issues of origin and function, or else conflate the issues, the Edinburgh sociologists distinguish the issues, take on truth as well as origin and function, and argue that all evaluations of scientific theories are dictated by nonintellectual factors. Would-be intellectual justifications purportedly mask sociological imperatives, including ideological ones. Epistemology becomes sociology. The boldness of this nonpostmodern approach to theorizing in science makes the postmodern approach to theorizing in religion rather tame.

Overall, theorizing about religion, whether by religionists or by social scientists, remains safe from the postmodern attack, just as social scientific theorizing about religion remains safe from the religionist attack. May social scientists continue to make sense of religion.

The category ‘religion’

One issue that has come, or come back, to the fore in recent decades is that of the term, or category, religion itself. Traditionally, the question raised has been whether proffered definitions of religion fit all cases. The difficulty with this procedure is that whoever offers the definition can reject cases that do not fit on exactly the grounds that they are not cases of religion. The argument is conspicuously question-begging since it presupposes rather than supports the appropriateness of the definition at hand. Yet equally question-begging is the criticism, for it, too, rests on some definition that must first be established. As circular as these debates go, some of the greatest works on theories of religion, notably Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871) and Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), begin their analyses of religion by rejecting existing definitions of religion – usually on the grounds that the definitions are too narrow – and substituting their own.

This traditional challenge to the category religion has been succeeded by a different one, one shaped by postmodernism. One form of this new challenge has been an appeal to the time and place of the origin of the category as an argument against its applicability beyond that time and place. Daniel Dubuisson’s The Western Construction of Religion (2003 [1998 in French]) is the finest example so far of this argument.

Dubuisson’s approach can best be appreciated by contrasting it to a work of only a decade earlier that takes for granted the suitability of the category religion and that celebrates the gradual extension of it to ever more cases: J. Samuel Preus’ excellent Explaining Religion (1987). For Preus, ‘religion’ identifies more or less obvious characteristics of a worldwide phenomenon. Where Dubuisson writes to challenge the universal applicability of the category religion, Preus writes to explain how the category has come to acquire its justifiably universal applicability. Where Dubuisson spurns the category religion on the grounds that