Hm.

I was really hot and emo in my blog for the past few months. Why?

For my own peace of mind, I will post something useful, cold, and academic. Now.

This following essay is my response to an article by Paul J. Griffiths that we read in Junior Seminar this past semester. Griffiths is an academic scholar of religion and at the same time a devout Catholic, and his article is worth conversing over, I think. I will post his article here sometime as my server's technical savvyness permits.

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REL 3931 – Assignment 6 – Fall 2008
A Response to the dialogue between Paul J. Griffiths and Ellen T. Armour
Dream Park

In his brief essay Paul J. Griffiths advises the nontheological scholars of religion to establish an appropriate self-awareness about their normativity, lest the academic study of religion should wilt in the future. Whether one is a theologian or a scientist, Griffiths argues, his or her definition of religion comes charged with essential assumptions about the human experience. One must hence recognize and unveil these assumptions about his or her own intellectual work before proceeding to analyze religion.

Griffiths first seeks to uncover underlying assumptions of the academic scholars of religion by discussing how they “sort out” religion. “Sortal terms are words (usually nouns) intended to sort things into kinds.” Every discipline has a “formal object” of study, and sortal terms describe such an object. There are two kinds of sortals: natural and artifactual. The natural sortal derives from processes in which human makings or interests do not play a role, either “in virtue of what they are” or from natural processes of the cosmic order. The artifactual sortal derives both its definition and existence from human makings and interests. “A set of prime numbers is a natural kind in this sense ... whereas the set of trousers is not ... without us and our interests (especially our legs), no trousers.”

Griffiths next argues that “'religion' is either a natural-kind sortal or an artifactual-kind sortal,” and that “some normative understandings are implied [in both].” He demonstrates that certain interpretations of religion are natural sortals, particularly that of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic kind. In these monotheistic traditions, “religion” as a human interaction with, and ultimately a closer union with, the divine becomes a natural-kind sortal: “the fact that each of us desires closer union with the God who brought us into being out of nothing is a fact about us that depends solely upon the God who made us and not upon our own interests or makings.” One could take this particular Christian-theological approach to religion, although “religion” is of “peripheral significance to Christian theology.”

On the other hand, Griffiths states that “most practitioners of nontheological studies of religion” deem religion as an artifactual-sortal. He also asserts that any artifactual construal of religion involves descriptive and normative arguments for it. The descriptive argument leads one to favor one artifactual sortal over the other, but the normative argument has deeper philosophical and moral consequences, because it appeals to “one's convictions about the order of things or about the kinds of thoughts that it is proper for human beings to have.” Ultimately, just as the Christian-theological approach to religion is imbued with a normative understanding about the human experience, so are the nontheological approaches. Concerning Bruce Lincoln, a nontheological theorist, Griffiths says: “Performing critical inquiry is for Lincoln a matter of conscience ... deeply articulated with other convictions about what human beings are like, what a just social order would be like, and how intellectual work in general ought to be undertaken.”

Griffiths says that he wants to see, not a termination of the academic study of religion (although Armour accuses him of this) but a confession of guilt by the academic scholars who claim to be free of normative axioms. Even as a theological scholar perceives his assumptions about humanity, cosmic order, and intellectual work as ethically compelling, so must an academic scholar also weigh the moral and philosophical consequences of each approach he or she takes.

Griffiths' argument echoes a serious caution to the academic scholars of religion, because he rejects their underlying assumption that scientific studies are descriptive, not normative. Hence, ignoring their own normativity (or “coyness,” as Griffiths calls it) can be fatal to the future of the academic study of religion. Griffiths' essay opens up a new window through which one evaluates the academic study of religion and its assumptions, but his evident suggestion that a fruitful future of the study of religion only rests in the Christian theology needs more explication.