Donald Wiebe
Biographic Data
| ID | 263132 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald Wiebe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald |
| FAMILY NAME | Wiebe |
| SIGNATURE | WIEBE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Trinity College |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-1111-0283 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 79 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 91 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
An Essay on the Scientific Study of Religion: A Macrolevel or Microlevel Enterprise
In his article “Toward a Realistic and Relevant ‘Science of Religion’” Benson Saler compliments me for urging scholars of religion to acquaint themselves with evolutionary theory in order “to re-establish a unifying framework for the study of religion.” But he was also skeptical about my defense of a macro-level study of religion which he thought would have to be autonomous – wholly independent of the “findings and theorizing of other sciences, p…
Astrology in European History: Its Philosophical Foundations Through the Ages, written by Gustav-Adolf Schoener
The ivory tower and the public realm
This essay is a response to the question of whether scholars of religion in the employ of the modern university have an obligation to help meet the challenges and threats 'to the social order sometimes linked to aspects of religion' raised at the 2023 annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion. Donald Wiebe argues here that even raising the question ignores, or reveals a failure to understand, the character and purpose of th…
Studying Religion, Past and Present: Essays in Honor of Panayotis Pachis
Celebrating the contributions of Panayotis Pachis to the field, this book discusses the past, present, and future of the study of religion in antiquity and modernity.Panayotis Pachis has dedicated his celebrated career at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki to the study of various aspects of ancient religions. The contents of this book reflect Pachis' conviction that the study of religious ideas and practices should be focused on three pilla…
Zwi Werblowsky, the Iahr, and Religionswissenschaft as ‘Basic Science’
In this essay I set out to defend the objectives of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) to promote ‘religious studies’ in the modern university as a rigorous scientific enterprise in search of descriptive, explanatory, and theoretical knowledge of religious thought and behaviour. More often than not, however, the discipline has been, and currently still is, presented as a ‘life-enhancing-discipline.’ At the tenth IAH…
The Road Not Taken in the Academic Study of Religion
As I settled in to write about the field of “the study of religion” under the rubric “Religious Studies: Whither and Why?” I realized that this is what I have been doing most of my academic career. Since 1975, with the presentation of my first paper to the twelfth quinquennial congress of the International Association of the History of Religions on the possibility of establishing a “science of religion,” to my The Politics of Religious Studies in…
The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion
This book provides an account of how a science of religion was able to emerge from the devotional, catechetical, theological, and philosophical forms of ‘religious studies’ that have generally characterized this field of scholarship. Although elements of the scientific study of religion can be found in the scholarly engagement with religion in the academy today, it is still primarily associated with religious and nonscientific humanistic quests f…
A Short Story of an Intellectual Obsession: Religion, Science, and the Modern Research University
The ivory tower in the guise of the modern research university has been critically important in the West's desire for rational, objective, and culture-transcending knowledge. In shielding the natural sciences from ideological influence and political interference, scientific claims are the best examples we have of intellectually justified belief claims about the nature of our world and our existence in it. Scientists, however, are not the only peo…
The Deep History of the Scientific Study of Religious Thought and Behaviour
This article provides a brief overview of the literature on transitions in modes of thought in the evolutionary development of our non-human and pre-historic human forebears. I will argue that this evolutionary history can account for the cognitive foundations underlying modern scientific modes of thought-dedicated to achieving 'disinterested' knowledge for its own sake-although not the actual historical emergence of the sciences. Essential to th…
Naturalism and Protectionism in the Study of Religions
How should we study religion? Must we be religious ourselves to truly understand it? Do we study religion to advance our knowledge, or should the study of religions help to reintroduce the sacred into our increasingly secularized world?
A Response to My Critics
This response replies to the previous papers
A Manifesto for the Scientific Study of Religions or Setting the Parameters for a Scientific Study of Religions In the Modern University
This is a manifesto—setting out the framework for the appropriate study of religious thought and practice in the context of the modern university
Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion, written by Christopher M. Driscoll and Monica Miller
Conversations and Controversies in the Scientific Study of Religion: Collaborative and Co-authored Essays by Luther H. Martin and Donald Wiebe
Luther H. Martin and Donald Wiebe together have spent the better part of a century exploring possibilities for a scientific study of religion. The following essays are a record of their conversations together and of their conversations and controversies with a number of leading scholars in religious studies that address that possibility. As with any scientific endeavor, knowledge advances when research assumptions and experimental designs are col…
Documenting the Delusion: A Case Study
This paper documents the lack of interest in creating an environment to promote a naturalistic study of religious thought and behavior at the Department for the Study of Religion ( dsr ) of the University of Toronto. The dsr , it seems to me, simply exemplifies the point about the self-deception and delusion that characterizes many departments for the study of religion about their academic or scientific credibility that I make in the essay
Chasing Down Religion: In the Sights of History and the Cognitive Sciences
Whether as a historian finding solutions to unresolved problems or as a scientist finding the causes for events and actions, Luther Martin’s primary focus has been to get to the roots of the religious impulse in human existence. This collection of essays from scholars of his own generation and from his best students cover the three major strands of his work: the Greco-Roman world, cognitive science approaches to explaining religious phenomena and…
Milestone or millstone? Does Norenzayan's book live up to the hype
In this book Norenzayan maintains that the mechanisms that make possible cooperative behavior among members of hunter-gatherer bands and tribal societies cannot account for what he calls the ‘scaled-up’ cooperation of humans in cities and states. Only the fear of being watched by an omnipotent and omniscient supernatural being who is able and willing to punish those who do not play fair can account for the emergence of the ultrasociality on which…
Change the Name! On the Importance of Reclaiming Naasr’s Original Objectives for the Twenty-First Century
A response to the previous four papers
Jesse Bering, The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life
The Scientific Study of Religion: Two Case Studies
The Scientific Study of Religion: Two Case Studies, One Response
A response to the previous four papers
Pseudo-Speciation of the Human Race: Religions as Hazard-Precaution Systems”
Human individuals and groups have faced not only immediate and obvious threats to their welfare that trigger a flight-fight-or-freeze response but also long-term and unpredictable challenges to their general security. Defence systems against such threats involve detecting subtle signs of potential danger and eliciting precautionary responses to them. I will argue here that there is sufficient evidence in the historical, psychological, and anthrop…
When Pessimism Is Realism: A Rejoinder to Our Colleagues
WE ARE PLEASED that the JAAR has seen fit to publish our deliberately provocative essay on our delusory belief that departments for the study of religion in our modern research universities might ever engage a sustained scientific study of religion. And we are especially grateful that the editor of the JAAR has solicited responses to our self-confessed delusions and are gratified that our respondents have taken time to provide critical appraisals…
Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion
We argue that it is delusory to think that “religious studies” has ever achieved, or can achieve, a full emancipation from religious concerns. We support this argument on the basis of the history of the field and our understanding of universal cognitive proclivities that have shaped that history.
Gary Lease (1940-2008)
The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion
1. My concern in this essay is with the relationship of theology to the study of religion, and, more particularly, to the academic study of religion. I shall not, however, focus attention here on such legitimate concerns that theology may have with the results of academic research on religion (e.g., Drummond 1975; Gualtieri 1972; and Wiebe 1978), or with historical or institutional questions concerning the two communities of scholars (e.g., Edsma…
Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion
We argue that it is delusory to think that “religious studies” has ever achieved, or can achieve, a full emancipation from religious concerns. We support this argument on the basis of the history of the field and our understanding of universal cognitive proclivities that have shaped that history.
The Politics of Wishful Thinking? Disentangling the Role of the Scholar-Scientist from that of the Public Intellectual in the Modern Academic Study of Religion
Although religion may well have relevance for various social, political, economic, cultural, and other related issues in society, I will argue here that this does not oblige the academic student of religion to become engaged with those matters. Indeed, to do so - not as a citizen but as a member of the academic guild which has responsibility to the field/discipline of Religious Studies and the modern research university at large - is to fuse and …
An Eternal Return All Over Again: The Religious Conversation Endures
The most recent of the presidential addresses to the American Academy of Religion by Robert Orsi, entitled “A New Beginning All Over Again,” suggests that the AAR has approved a radical change of orientation and adoption of new goals. I set out here to review the thoughts and ideas of the elected leaders of the AAR in their presidential addresses over the past decade in search of evidence for such a new beginning. I argue that, for the most part,…
Pseudo-Speciation of the Human Race: Religions as Hazard-Precaution Systems”
Human individuals and groups have faced not only immediate and obvious threats to their welfare that trigger a flight-fight-or-freeze response but also long-term and unpredictable challenges to their general security. Defence systems against such threats involve detecting subtle signs of potential danger and eliciting precautionary responses to them. I will argue here that there is sufficient evidence in the historical, psychological, and anthrop…
The prelogical mentality revisited
Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion
BEYOND THE SCEPTIC AND THE DEVOTEE: REDUCTIONISM IN THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION Get access DONALD WIEBE DONALD WIEBE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LII, Issue 1, March 1984, Pages 157–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LII.1.157 Published: 01 March 1984
Explanation and the scientific study of religion
(1975). Explanation and the scientific study of religion. Religion: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 33-52
A religious agenda continued
It has been argued that with the transformation of the National Association of Biblical Instructors (NABI) into the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 1964 the study of religion in America moved from being essentially a religious exercise to a broadly scientific undertaking. The review and comparison of the presidential addresses to the NABI with the addresses to the AAR, it is argued here, undermines that conclusion. The founding of the AAR i…
The 'academic naturalization' of Religious Studies: Intent or pretence
Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion
Why the Academic Study of Religion?’ Motive and Method in the Study of Religion
The methodological implications of the motives that underlie the study of religion and, more particularly, the academic study of religion have not, I think, received the attention they deserve. They are of the utmost importance, however, for the differences of motivation between the study of religion legitimated by the modern university and the scholarly study of religion that antedates it, sponsor radically different, if not mutually exclusive, …
The Role of 'Belief' in the Study of Religion: A Response to W. C. Smith
The concept of belief as an interpretive category in the scholarly study of religion has recently come under heavy criticism from various quarters. The concept of belief, it is argued, is not merely useless in the task of interpreting the meaning of the historical religious traditions, but rather is positively misleading. Consequently, a 'call' is issued to students of religion to move beyond belief in their attempts to understand the religious d…
The Role of 'Belief' in the Study of Religion
A Manifesto for the Scientific Study of Religions or Setting the Parameters for a Scientific Study of Religions In the Modern University
This is a manifesto—setting out the framework for the appropriate study of religious thought and practice in the context of the modern university
Milestone or millstone? Does Norenzayan's book live up to the hype
In this book Norenzayan maintains that the mechanisms that make possible cooperative behavior among members of hunter-gatherer bands and tribal societies cannot account for what he calls the ‘scaled-up’ cooperation of humans in cities and states. Only the fear of being watched by an omnipotent and omniscient supernatural being who is able and willing to punish those who do not play fair can account for the emergence of the ultrasociality on which…
Change the Name! On the Importance of Reclaiming Naasr’s Original Objectives for the Twenty-First Century
A response to the previous four papers
The Scientific Study of Religion: Two Case Studies, One Response
A response to the previous four papers
Religious Studies: Toward reestablishing the field
Modern Western Science, the Study of Religion, and Orientalism and Religion
On Religious Studies and the Rhetoric of Religious Reading
In The Politics of Religious Studies (1999) I set out to provide an under standing of Religious Studies as a legitimate academic discipline committed to achieving scientifically respectable knowledge about I maintained, that is, that Religious Studies in university context must be a social science that must strive, as all scientific endeavor, to be free from religious, political, and ideological determi nation. And I further argued that as natura…
Ninian Smart: A Tribute
Alive, but only barely: Graduate studies in religion at the University of Toronto1
Religion in Relation: Method, Application and Moral Location
Part 1 From analysis to history: Mircea Eliade - some theoretical problems reductionism and structural anthropology falsifying deep structures Hubert, Mauss and the comparative social history of religions. Part 2 From enlightenment to exchange: gradual enlightenment, sudden enlightenment and empiricism Levi-Strauss and the Buddhists on generalized exchange and the domestication of the Sangha. Part 3 The moral location of theories: Heidegger is no…
On declaring WAR: A critical comment
In recent reviews of Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in Study of Religion, ed. Michael Pye, (Marburg: Diagonal-verlag, 1989), proceedings of special conference of International Association for History of Religions (IAHR), Ninian Smart and Ursula King (MTSR 2/2 [1990a]: 298-304 and 3/1 [1991]: 142-146) take us to task for giving attention once again to problem of interference of religious practice in academic study of religion. Smar…
Explanation and the scientific study of religion
(1975). Explanation and the scientific study of religion. Religion: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 33-52
Is a Science of Religion Possible
The Role of 'Belief' in the Study of Religion: A Response to W. C. Smith
The concept of belief as an interpretive category in the scholarly study of religion has recently come under heavy criticism from various quarters. The concept of belief, it is argued, is not merely useless in the task of interpreting the meaning of the historical religious traditions, but rather is positively misleading. Consequently, a 'call' is issued to students of religion to move beyond belief in their attempts to understand the religious d…
The Role of 'Belief' in the Study of Religion
Methodology
Journal Article METHODOLOGY Get access Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology (Reason and Religion. Method and Theory in the Study and Interpretation of Religion, 13). Ed. by Lauri Honko. The Hague Mouton, 1979. xxix + 632 pages, indices. $56.50 ISBN 90-279-77828 Donald Wiebe Donald Wiebe Trinity CollegeToronto Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume XLVIII,…
Three responses to Faith and Belief: A review article
Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion
Methodology
METHODOLOGY Get access Interpretive Theories of Religion By Donald A Crosby Mouton, 1981 335 pages $38.25 Donald Wiebe Donald Wiebe Trinity College, University of Toronto Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume L, Issue 4, December 1982, Pages 636–637, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/L.4.636 Published: 01 December 1982
Short review and book note
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, On Understanding Islam, selected studies, The Hague, Mouton, 1981, 351 pages. DM 105 Edward Mortimer, Faith and power: The politics of Islam, London, Faber & Faber (1982), 407 pp., £10.50 David Westerlund, From socialism to Islam? Notes on Islam as a political factor in contemporary Africa, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Research Report no. 61, Uppsala (1982), 62 pp. Skr 20 W. L. Brenneman, S. O. Yarian, and A.…
Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion
BEYOND THE SCEPTIC AND THE DEVOTEE: REDUCTIONISM IN THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION Get access DONALD WIEBE DONALD WIEBE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LII, Issue 1, March 1984, Pages 157–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LII.1.157 Published: 01 March 1984
The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion
1. My concern in this essay is with the relationship of theology to the study of religion, and, more particularly, to the academic study of religion. I shall not, however, focus attention here on such legitimate concerns that theology may have with the results of academic research on religion (e.g., Drummond 1975; Gualtieri 1972; and Wiebe 1978), or with historical or institutional questions concerning the two communities of scholars (e.g., Edsma…
Concept and Empathy
Before and after Dialogue: Is There a Significant Difference? A Response to John Cobb's "Beyond Dialogue"
The 'academic naturalization' of Religious Studies: Intent or pretence
The prelogical mentality revisited
Why the Academic Study of Religion?’ Motive and Method in the Study of Religion
The methodological implications of the motives that underlie the study of religion and, more particularly, the academic study of religion have not, I think, received the attention they deserve. They are of the utmost importance, however, for the differences of motivation between the study of religion legitimated by the modern university and the scholarly study of religion that antedates it, sponsor radically different, if not mutually exclusive, …
Continuity and Change among Canadian Mennonite Brethren
Journal Article Continuity and Change among Canadian Mennonite Brethren, by Peter Hamm. Waterloo, Ont: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1987, 296 pp. $29.95 Get access Donald Wiebe Donald Wiebe Trinity College, University of Toronto Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 49, Issue 2, Summer 1988, Pages 194–195, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711021 Published: 01 July 1988
Taking Religion Seriously: Eric Sharpe's Comparative Religion: a History as Apology
"The Studies of Religions in the Context of Social Sciences Methodological and Theoretical Relations", Warsaw-Jablonna 5-9 September 1989
Essay: Axioms and Dogmas in the Study of Religion
Robert A. Segal, Donald Wiebe; ESSAY: Axioms and Dogmas in the Study of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LVII, Issue 3, 1 Octo
Doing the History of Religion: Eric Sharpe's Comparative Religion
DOING THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: ERIC SHARPE'S COMPARATIVE RELIGION ANNETTE ARONOWICZ ANTONIO R. GUALTIERI ROSALIND I. J. HACKETT URSULA KING ROBERT SEGAL DONALD WIEBE These papers were originally presented at a session of the group on the History of the Study of Religion at the November, 1988 meetings of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago. The session was co- ordinated by Robert Segal and chaired by Ivan Strenski of the University of Cali…
Explaining religion: The intellectual ethos
Is science really an implicit religion
A Report On the XVIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions
Disciplinary axioms, boundary conditions and the academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson
(1990). Disciplinary axioms, boundary conditions and the academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson. Religion: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 17-29
Philosophy (64 works) · Sociology (61 works) · Epistemology (47 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (47 works) · Study and Philosophy of Religion (43 works) · Philosophy (35 works) · Religious studies (33 works) · Political science (29 works) · Law (26 works) · History (21 works)