Response to Cabezón

I WANT TO THANK Professor Cabezón for an engaging paper written, supposedly, from his “little corner” of the field of religious studies but which, in fact, sheds light on much of the field as a whole. As he notes, the authors of these essays for the JAAR were encouraged to write something like a “manifesto” and so, per definition, to call others to awaken and to change. Cabezón has done so with considerable skill and dispatch. The respondents to these manifestoes were directed to focus on “the promise and dangers, scope and limitations of the agenda” announced in an essay. My task is, then, a relatively easy one. If I have understood Cabezón’s argument, there is little, if any, substantial disagreement among us. The worries I have are about how the case is made for the future of religious studies as he envisions it. Ironically, the essay might at points be at odds with itself, announcing a future that it does not enact. Before isolating the worries about possible points of dispute, let me characterize the essay’s argument.

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