Sharpe On the Sharpe Symposium

Only once before have I responded to a reviewer. On that occasion, some fifteen years ago, three years had elapsed between the review and the response; and in that time the distinguished reviewer had been gathered to his ancestors. Understandably, therefore, the debate came to an end at that point. I have the same feeling on this far more elaborate occasion: not one of resentment at having been hauled over the scholarly coals, but a feeling of disappointment that those who took part in the symposium on my book did not make more constructive use of their opportunity. Having written a book about more than a hundred years of methods and methodologists in the study of religion—an essay in the history of ideas, with very few methodological pretensions of its own—I was expecting a history of ideas critique by historians of ideas. This, however, hardly seemed to occur to my critics. None seemed to want to ask whether my picture in broad outline (and leaving aside the inevitable blemishes) was or was not a just one. Comparative Religion: A History is not yet canonical, and 1 know it to be vulnerable to criticism on numerous points of historical detail. Why, then, 1 have been wondering, were a few more of these points not picked up? In the virtual absence of the kind of criticism I was expecting (albeit in fear and trembling), I can only reply to the criticism I actually received. But before I proceed, I should like to say a little about the

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