Bridging the Gap between Understanding and Explanation Approaches to the Study of Religion

Methods of studying religion can be divided into those which help the investigator understand religion from the believer's standpoint and those which explain religion in the terms of the sciences. Yet despite the contemporary polemics, these methods need not be alienated from one another. Applying the hermeneutic theory of Paul Ricoeur we can see that the study of religion involves us in an act of interpretation which necessarily requires both methods of understanding and explanation. Ricoeur's theory is employed to show how these methods can be systematically used in tandem so that the most adequate interpretation of the religious world is produced. Religious Studies, a field which lacks its own indigenous methodology and must borrow its methods from the humanities and sciences, has always had something of a methodological identity crisis. Judging by recent articles in religious studies journals, that chronic crisis is currently in something of an aggravated state and, I believe, requires some serious attention. I also believe that the most promising resources to address the current crisis will be found in the hermeneutic theory of Paul Ricoeur. There have been a number of attempts to categorize the wide variety of methods used in religious studies. Peter Berger has employed the terms, Functional and Substantive. Robert Wuthnow has employed the terms, Dualistic and Wholistic, and Robert Segal has used the terms (used by many others), Reductionistic and Nonreductionistic. Often, attempts to categorize the methods of religious studies are initiated with a polemical agenda which favors one type of methodology over the other. Thus, Berger argues that functional methodologies have been used ideologically to deny transcendence and that only substantive approaches are truly legitimate for the study of religion. Segal, on the other hand, argues that substantive or nonreductive methodologies alienate nonbelievers from the study of religion and that reductive methodologies offer the most complete access to knowledge of religion. And alternatively, Wuthnow claims that both reductionistic (dualistic) and nonreductionistic (wholistic) approaches are flawed, and that religion is most adequately studied by an emerging third method which he calls structural analysis. What Ricoeur offers this methodological debate are two alternative terms to organize

Bridging (networking) · Epistemology · Sociology · Computer Science · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Study and Philosophy of Religion

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