Sanskrit has no word for religion, which troubles the scholars studying it
Religious studies examines faith from the outside, borrowing tools from anthropology, sociology, psychology and history instead of any one creed. Its awkward secret is that nobody agrees what its subject is, and some scholars argue the very category of 'religion' is a Western export that other cultures never needed.
The field differs from theology in stance. Theology seeks to understand the divine on a tradition's own terms; religious studies aims to describe, compare and explain belief without endorsing any particular one. It emerged in 19th-century Europe, when critical study of the Bible was thriving and Hindu and Buddhist scriptures were appearing in European translation for the first time.
Two early names stand out. Friedrich Max Muller in England was a philologist rather than a professor of religion, while Cornelis Petrus Tiele in the Netherlands held an actual chair in the subject. Early labels for the discipline included comparative religion, and some Americans still call it history of religion, a label tied to the University of Chicago and Mircea Eliade from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Robert Segal has argued it needs no single method of its own: it is a subject open to many approaches.
Defining the object of study is the stubborn problem. Monothetic definitions look for one essential feature, either substantive, such as belief in gods, or functional, such as calming the fear of death or binding a community together. Polythetic definitions instead list family resemblances, none of which every religion must share. Complicating matters, secular outlooks like nationalism and Marxism display many religious traits while rejecting the label.
Some go further and want to abandon the term. Russell McCutcheon notes that many peoples studied under this heading have no equivalent concept at all. Even the Latin root offers no escape, since religio has been traced to three different verbs, meaning to observe carefully, to bind oneself and to choose again. Motives inside the field vary too: some scholars defend faith, some try to explain it away, and others argue the training helps people navigate a globalised world and make sense of sectarian tension.
Source: Religious studies
