Religious Studies: Wither and Why?

There are a number of signs which suggest a growing concern among scholars of religion regarding the shape and future of the field of religious studies within higher education. (Cady 1995, 393) Although it may seem to be a typo-laden reference to this special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of a publication that, from the very start of my career, I have often relied upon (and in which Iam honored to have been published),1 my contribution's title is instead an undisguised nod to an essay of Jonathan Z. Smith's from almost thirty years ago. It ran as an afterword to yet another special issue, one that was edited by Gary Lease and entitled “Pathologies in the Academic Study of Religion: North American Institutional Case Studies.” Appearing in 1995 as volume 7:4 of MTSR, the issue was conceived almost two years prior (this was all during the time when I was one of the co-editors of the journal) and was motivated by events taking place on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in early fall of 1993 when a plan to restructure their School of Arts and Sciences was announced—a plan that initially involved closing three units, one of which was Religious Studies. It was, therefore, more than evident at that time that several Departments of Religious Studies in both Canada and the US were under threat or had already either been closed or collapsed into yet other, larger and cross-disciplinary units, suggesting to Lease that an issue reflecting on these case studies (what lessons could be learned?) would benefit the journal's readers. That special issue included tales from: the University of Alberta (written by Eva Neumair-Dargay—their unit is today part of the Department of History, Classics, and Religion); the University of Lethbridge (by Marilyn Nefsky—their small department remains today); and the University of Toronto (by Donald Wiebe—Toronto's once autonomous and cross-disciplinary graduate unit was collapsed into the undergraduate department which had close ties to the Toronto School of Theology), all in Canada, along with American cases from Arizona State (by Linell Cady—although included as an example of a success story, their unit was eventually collapsed into what is called the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, on a campus now very much focused on online education) and the University of Pennsylvania (by Ann Matter—their department remains today, small but also offering a Ph.D. degree). The case studies were joined by Lease's own blow-by-blow account of the challenges faced some years prior at his own campus, UC Santa Cruz, where the Department of Religious Studies had been “disestablished” back in the 1979–1980 academic year after a rather critical assessment from an outside team of reviewers, which included Ray Hart, Ninian Smart, and Christine Downing.2 (Subsequent to that, students in the History of Consciousness, itself a cross-disciplinary program chaired by Lease, could fashion a doctoral program in the study of religion, as several successfully did.) And so it was to this collection of dispatches that Smith was asked to respond by way of an afterword with a title whose less than optimistic parenthetical—“Whither (wither) and Why?” (Smith 1995)—was itself in reference to the subtitle of a much earlier essay by yet another famous Smith (more than likely inspiring the title for this special issue in RSR as well), one in which W. C. famously offered what J. Z. later considered to be the “crazy idea” that “no statement about a religion is valid unless it can be acknowledged by that religion's believers: (W. C. Smith 1959, 42).3 Concerning the case studies on which J. Z. Smith was asked to comment, in his introduction to the issue, Gary Lease writes that Smith “opined on first seeing the essays collected here [that] they read like an obituary” (1995a, 302). With reference to such a critical assessment of the field's institutional health three decades ago—a field that today is still nicely summed up by the gulf between the methods proposed by these two Smiths, with the earlier of the two, though writing over sixty years ago, aptly representing what I see as the still dominant strain in the field—I aim to identify here some of the reasons why I now tend to think that, without a serious intervention and then recalibration, Departments of Religious Studies may soon wilt away from the ranks of units populating at least the public university's Humanities programs, perhaps leaving behind (at least for the time being) a few scholars of religion housed in, say, history departments as well as a handful of privileged private programs where one or another form of theological work has often passed for the academic study of religion. Although I think that the time is not too late to address some of these issues to try to ensure a far more secure future for our field, given larger institutional trends in higher education over the past decades, not to mention a variety of growing national and international pressures, I admit that I would not be surprised to learn that some readers may have concluded that the ship has already sailed and that, much as with some people's assessment of climate change, the time for effective intervention may have passed us by. Given that I am an optimist at heart—for what else motivates even the most ardent critic but a hope for things to change for what they consider to be the better?—I refuse to relinquish the idea that we each have some tactical agency that might impact our situation, despite the admittedly daunting structural moment in which much of higher education now finds itself. And so, returning to Smith's afterword: among the challenges facing the field at that time, he concluded, was a lack of professionalism and thus disciplinary unity; or, to put it differently, despite some common issues, the story he took away from the six case studies was that local challenges and opportunities on each campus drove idiosyncratic curricula and presented to each department problems of their own. Despite Lease's hope for that set of papers, shared solutions, let alone beneficial takeaways from others' experiences, were therefore hard to come by. As Smith goes on, in a rather undisguised criticism of the American Academy of Religion's and the Society of Biblical Literature's longtime “let a thousand flower bloom” approach to the field: “Our professional associations appear to have chosen (this may be too deliberate a term) to foster localisms of every stripe, thus undercutting the very function that requires their existence” (1995, 408). That the vagaries of this word “religion” were linked to all of this, as was the manner in which our field, at least in North America, usually grew out of no less local campus ministries fifty to sixty years ago, was not lost on Smith, of course. (Notably, Lethbridge's program did not share that common origins tale.) That today we continue to lack any field-wide rationale, and thus, agreement on what it is that we are doing when we say that we study religion should be more than evident to anyone, even giving the study of religion just a cursory look. Those wanting more than just anecdotal evidence can instead consult the utter diversity of uses of “religion” among the seventeen leading scholars included in the volume that Aaron Hughes and I recently co-edited (2021c) or, perhaps, consider Richard Miller's recent criticism of scholars such as J. Z. Smith for their failure to make pronouncements on whether certain religions are, to put it as bluntly as does Miller, either good or bad for people (Miller 2021, 65). Much like the gap between the two Smiths, the distance between such contemporary approaches is indeed tremendous—informing my choice of the term “gulf” just above; given this disconnect how could one imagine ever coming up with solutions to shared institutional challenges let alone even agreeing on what constitutes a challenge in the first place?4 In fact, that more faculty today seem not to have concluded that Cady's comment from 1995, as per the epigraph to this paper, remains as relevant as ever is evidence of this lack of shared vision throughout the history of the field; I have no doubt that its relevance is not lost on the many faculty who, over just the past few years, have also had their Departments merged out from under them.5 Lacking such agreement—and now going beyond that MTSR special issue—means that the field as a whole is ill-prepared for the sort of structural changes that have been taking place in higher education over the past few decades. To rephrase: each department, and in those cases where departments lack strong leadership, sometimes each individual faculty member, are largely on their own, continually trying to reinvent a wheel that, unbeknownst to them, may be functioning rather well elsewhere.6 Now, despite a degree of localism still informing colleges and universities as a whole,7 the extent to which they now have little choice but to be tightly woven into national, not to mention international, economic, social, and political issues, means that each seemingly isolated and to a large degree distinctive Department of Religious Studies or Department of Religion (the names once made a difference but now likely do not, for the most part) is being presented with a rather uniform set of pressures. From decades of government funding cuts at the state and federal level,8 leading to continually rising tuition costs which, in turn, prompt students and their families, many of whom are accumulating truly staggering student loans,9 to increasingly consider their financial investment in a college education as needing to bear immediate practical fruits, that is, a career and an income. This has all led, sensibly enough, to a strong preference for the many so-called professional majors that, over the past several decades, have increasingly populated campuses—majors that, in response to market demand, colleges have been investing in and promoting in recent years (e.g., engineering, business, nursing, social work, etc., including STEM, of course).10 Add to this that the very governments cutting university funding while subsidizing yet other sectors of the economy then rely on the decline in the Humanities that results, along with their disciplines' inability to achieve certain short-term, practical outcomes that their administrations prioritize, to justify further cuts to this portion of their curricula and you arrive at what might be described unironically as the imperfect storm that has been circling for decades around the Humanities. (England's just-announced plan to limit enrollment in so-called low-value subjects is but the latest of such measures.11) And bearing in mind the worldwide economic collapse of 2008 (which rocked many college operating budgets and thus hiring plans, from which some have yet to recover) followed just over a decade later by the (sometimes dramatic) cuts (on my campus these were strategically called “taxes”) necessitated by the 2020 pandemic-induced economic decline then we arrive at a situation where likening the present predicament to past hiring slumps or seeing it all as being akin to, say, ongoing challenges in recruiting new religious studies majors seems ill-considered at best, due to the manner in which such claims of continuity and similarity appear to minimize the peculiarities of our current situation. A dramatic change in degree understandably makes it seem like a change in kind, especially to those now leaving doctoral programs and going on the academic job market. They, more than anyone else, know that our house is on fire. Speaking as someone who has just ended eighteen years as a Department chair in a large southern public university, I can attest to the energy and inventiveness needed among a faculty to try to help their department (thereby helping themselves, to be sure) to succeed in times like these. of that is already agreement among as to the state of not, then even more energy be needed to that their may be from what is going on out the structural earlier are not the whole for are also what we might as and that a department trying to relevant and the of their and And here is where I to Smith's on what I just the field's In the I have that the largely to an autonomous field in North America, about an and the for its ended up the field in the very of it to this few of our disciplinary seem to what we now I think that the goes not many other in the study of religion is linked to while most often start with of the they soon are offered that to in on just one and then just one or or time or within the on, perhaps, to graduate work on an increasingly focused of that one time, or eventually a on such a that, in most a handful of other ever read let alone their this is not in and of is needed in all academic would that this of work further the field, especially at a moment such as in a field where the of our students more than one with us in the US where Religious Studies programs more than likely almost on the of other and their majors what is as the or the that such a approach to and education our institutional is, I would rather you to this that, due to those larger structural few of the current doctoral students for in the faculty ranks likely have at least in the in a secure then is more than ever to undergraduate and graduate education along with the for students even our field, much less a this is where the to the of my we are not to address the between on the one and the lack of career opportunities for our graduate students to mention our who lack the sort of Religious to many of their and who, in many the study of religion as a while on their first for their then I it to imagine autonomous Departments of Religious Studies to in the the of our undergraduate have been those professional with a degree of while few of our faculty are being with some units given their of from at least some of these but the that most departments now despite a small number of their own majors and thus a small number of more undergraduate faculty often in to more than likely the of programs, leading to their many other units on rather and than Religious also for those number of Humanities as part of their own or education And so, back once to that MTSR issue, I that we are in part to for our present at for and a field in which we have to our own of being set and in one that is not and to to degree that we are to the that still much work in the religion is set or even and thus the described As a once to ago, at a time when the department had a to on religion in that I by the many departments on our campus that were a many whose they each took as to their suggesting that the would likely the issue of by to other than a own of its instead on such other the of all it is far to have an a than a student (and thus number of job funding success among the and so And so, whether ever was a time when an let us say, religion in was just or (and despite the for some higher just a few academic ago, I am not ever was such a that moment is past at the of in which most of us as I am our for how faculty out their work do graduate for the most not up with these with many scholars still a that goes back several years, to a time when our had certain and that are no in in the In fact, Smith made an in what I still see as his address in on the of where he for and scholars to be doing work, by to be in as their work to between of and but also to of for the of as well as into their several and (Smith In this scholars would each set as an as he would have but not of religion in of some even and even seemingly that we also see in history or in contemporary the of for let alone the uses of in social and over such things as and work therefore, be at with well beyond any one that is, any one or not to mention to the study of a variety of other well outside our field, both of which are beyond the current that that each where scholars of religion their energy is and it is no that Smith, a on The and then a of a variety of and also to how US into a of the and of our (Smith this was how both our graduate curricula work and thus the (e.g., along with the and that such as J. Z. Smith an earlier essay of Smith's which made much the we might can we people with doctoral that to do such J. Z. Smith W. C. Smith I am to this what has us to this in the paper, let us well beyond that and instead might someone with such work and a It is increasingly that many of us continue to be to doctoral students in the fashion and in our own to have into future upon our or as our Departments in many of our or marking the most hope for the bearing in mind the sort of that Smith it may now be that in religion, we are not religion at that may or may not even be as all along many of us have been this one of and for the of our work by our and our as an for in far social trends or work that has more than just for the focused on which we to have our and in fact, that might out to be the whole of doing the and work in the first place I in in I am is more than what is now sometimes as religious term that I could behind far more it did not so often seem to on the of religion usually as a beneficial but as it also in in the so-called helping work, or as part of the practical impact on of so-called religious we and and even this term “religion” by no seeing it as or a and therefore special part of so-called see it as that are by social for practical then the needed to about such or have and the might now such a on their our students (and their once they are made of the practical of this in be to the you have a degree religious comment at their future job by how it was that while a student in our field set the for a manner of and critical that they to all of other and we are to relinquish the that our of study is And at times like these in higher such by means of an on is an for Humanities to our field and its curricula and graduate student in this way the already of the field that many have more than in a field whose may have been a decades behind back when all those over continually populated such as RSR (which to over the and of the field As an optimistic critic a I would who not to to his career in a field whose is well behind are all here to things in shape than we them, after therefore, some offering the assessment of our current That offering an at the of current graduate (e.g., see a that is also the for a volume on doctoral in our at a time when the academic job market means that a program let us say, and writing instead of for a and other than essay writing can be collected into a of constitutes one that is solutions to the my hope is that in the of some about where we now are also some for at least one where we can some during the current that our now can have an impact even the have been this agency means faculty in their academic and who are rather to to be far more and to by outside their once they that is likely no one out who is going to come to their my larger units on a university campus, such as colleges or are more than likely not focused on the that we see to be our in fact, a approach to all of this that the that us may be other units on campus or even the university as a It means that those who us were to the into which their students would and have their the number of over the years, when I have to is not what I up doing when I my many of us I now we are in the of trying to our the and it us to be and And so, back to the that us not so ago, a few of us from to some about the not a mind that our graduate for our who largely work in a variety of upon while a small number have for to doctoral those about who us to do this no we it out on our own, doing it we that it is for our success after this approach where faculty in their own is going to have to are a number of that they are already but the one that we are here is the future of their their graduate programs, their their their own And so the of or, that to in that can be of and may be just the to a more our own perhaps, but for the of our And who it then one of those very students might be by doing other than the of and essays from the

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