Sisyphus and I
Or, Theologians I Have Known in Three Decades as Religionswissenschaftler
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.40132Keywords:
Religious studies, theology, David HumeAbstract
My work as a scholar of religion began in a Department of Religious Studieswhich had been the first in the United Kingdom not to be connectedto Theology. I now teach in a Religion programme which has recentlysevered its institutional connection to Theology. However, for many ofthe intervening years in my three decades in the discipline I worked incontexts which combined theology with religious studies. My researchbegan with reflection on the historical origin of the academic study ofreligion. This article reflects on the relationship between theology andreligious studies as I have experienced it, and argues that it is crucial tomaintain the distinction and to communicate it clearly to those outsideof our discipline.
References
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2020 The Sisyphean Discipline: A Pre?cis of an Unnatural History of Religions. Religio: Revue pro religonistiku 28(1). Forthcoming.
App, Urs 2010 The Birth of Orientalism. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Bowie, G. Lee, Meredith W. Michaels and Robert C. Solomon 1988 Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego.
Camus, Albert 1979 The Myth of Sisyphus, translated by Justin O’Brien. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Clayton, John 1987 Religions, Reasons and Gods. Religious Studies 23(1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500018503
1990 Piety and the Proofs. Religious Studies 26(1): 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500020187
1993 Gottesbeweise (Systematisch/Religionsphilosophisch). In Theologische Realenzyklopa?die, edited by Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Muller, 13: 740–84. W. de Gruyter, Berlin.
2006 Religions, Reasons, and Gods: Essays in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, prepared for publication by Anne M. Blackburn and Thomas D. Carroll. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
D’Costa, Gavin 1996 The End of ‘Theology’ and ‘Religious Studies’. Theology 99(791): 338–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571X9609900502
Dawes, Gregory W. 1996 Theology and Religious Studies in the University: ‘Some Ambiguities’ Revisited. Religion 26(1): 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1996.0004
2016 The Philosophy of Religion: Religion, Ritual, and Rationality. Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, Dunedin.
Dennett, Daniel C. 2013 Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. W. W. Norton, New York.
Deshpande, Sharad 2015 G. R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Ved?nta. In Philosophy in Colonial India, edited by Sharad Deshpande, 119–35. Springer, New Delhi.
Donovan, Peter 1990 Neutrality in Religious Studies. Religious Studies 26(1): 103–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500020230
Ford, David F. 1998 Theology and Religious Studies at the Turn of the Millenium [sic]: Reconceiving the Field. Teaching Theology and Religion 1(1): 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9647.00002
Ford, David F., Ben Quash and Janet Martin Soskice 2005 Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Franzmann, Majella 2008 Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. In Religious Studies: A Global View, edited by Gregory D. Alles, 218–41. Routledge, London.
Green, Nile 2018 The Waves of Heterotopia: Toward a Vernacular Intellectual History of the Indian Ocean. The American Historical Review 123(3): 846–74. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.3.846
Halbfass, Wilhelm 1988 India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Harrison, Peter 1990 ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Isichei, Elizabeth 1993 Some Ambiguities in the Academic Study of Religion. Religion 23(4): 379–90. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1993.1032
Jackson, Robert, and Dermot Killingley 1994 Approaches to Hinduism. John Murray, London.
Killingley, Dermot 2000 A Pygmy Smile: Occasional and Intertextual Poems. Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Killingley, Dermot, and Siew-Yue Killingley 2004 Beginning Sanskrit: A Practical Course based on Graded Reading and Exercises. 2nd edn. Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Lancaster University 2009 Teaching Programme 2009–2010. Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster.
Lash, Nicholas 1996 The Beginning and the End of ‘Religion’. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Lipner, Julius J. 1983 Theology and Religious Studies: Thoughts on a Crisis of Identity. Theology 86(711): 193–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571X8308600306
1988 Theology and Religious Studies. In The Threshold of Theology, edited by Paul Avis, 140–59. Marshall Pickering, Basingstoke.
2005 Love. In Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century, edited by David F. Ford, Ben Quash and Janet Martin Soskice, 90–103. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Loughlin, Gerard 2004 Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology. Blackwell, Oxford.
Marshall, P. J. 1970 The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Martin, Luther H., and Donald Wiebe 2012 Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80(3): 587–97. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfs030
McCauley, Robert N. 2011 Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Milbank, John 1990a The End of Dialogue. In Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by Gavin D’Costa, 174–91. Orbis, Maryknoll, NY.
1990b Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Blackwell, Oxford.
Moore, Albert C. 2001 Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Otago: 1946–2000. An Overview. Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin.
Pearson, M. N. 2010 Connecting the Littorals: Cultural Brokers in the Early Modern Indian Ocean. In Eyes Across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean, edited by Pamila Gupta, Isabel Hofmeyr and M. N. Pearson, 32–47. Unisa, Pretoria.
Preus, James S. 1987 Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Rae, Murray 2008 On Reading Scripture Theologically. Princeton Theological Review 14(1): 13–26.
Rubie?s, Joan-Pau 2000 Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Said, Edward W. 1978 Orientalism. Vintage, New York.
Segal, Robert A. 1994 Hume’s Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion. Religion 24(3): 225–34. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1994.1020
Sharpe, Eric J. 1975 Comparative Religion: A History. Duckworth, London.
Smart, Ninian, John Clayton, Patrick Sherry and Steven T. Katz (eds) 1985 Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West. 3 vols. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 1962 The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind. Macmillan, New York.
Sweetman, Will 2001 Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship. Religion 31(3): 209–24. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.2001.0341
2003a Hinduism and the History of Religion: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 15(4): 329–53. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006803322697407
2003b Mapping Hinduism: ‘Hinduism’ and the Study of Indian Religions, 1600–1776. Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, Halle.
2014 Retracing Bartholoma?us Ziegenbalg’s Path. In Beyond Tranquebar: Grappling across Cultural Borders in South India, edited by Esther Fihl and A. R. Venkatachalapathy, 304–21. Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad.
2019 The Absent Vedas. Journal of the American Oriental Society 139(4): 781–803. https://doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.139.4.0781
Sweetman, Will, and R. Ilakkuvan 2012 Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholoma?us Ziegenbalg’s Tamil Library. Institut franc?ais de Pondiche?ry, Pondicherry; E?cole franc?aise d’Extre?me Orient, Paris.
Thomsen, Anton 1909 David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. The Monist 19(2): 269–88. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist190919224
Turner, Harold W. 1992 Questions, Hard or Otherwise, for Religious Studies in New Zealand Universities. Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review 24(1): 14–28.
University of Otago 2002 Report of the Panel Reviewing the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Humanities Division, University of Otago, Dunedin.
2008a Self-Review Document. Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin.
2008b Departmental Review: Department of Theology and Religious Studies. University of Otago, Dunedin.
Veitch, James 1991 Establishing an Image and Settling on a Name: The Coming of Age of an Academic Discipline. In Religious Studies in Dialogue: Essays in Honour of Albert C. Moore, edited by Maurice Andrew, Peter Matheson and Simon Rae, 27–35. Otago University Press, Dunedin.
Xavier, A?ngela Barreto, and Ines G. Županov 2015 Catholic Orientalism: Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge (16th–18th Centuries). Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
2020 The Sisyphean Discipline: A Pre?cis of an Unnatural History of Religions. Religio: Revue pro religonistiku 28(1). Forthcoming.
App, Urs 2010 The Birth of Orientalism. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Bowie, G. Lee, Meredith W. Michaels and Robert C. Solomon 1988 Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego.
Camus, Albert 1979 The Myth of Sisyphus, translated by Justin O’Brien. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Clayton, John 1987 Religions, Reasons and Gods. Religious Studies 23(1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500018503
1990 Piety and the Proofs. Religious Studies 26(1): 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500020187
1993 Gottesbeweise (Systematisch/Religionsphilosophisch). In Theologische Realenzyklopa?die, edited by Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Muller, 13: 740–84. W. de Gruyter, Berlin.
2006 Religions, Reasons, and Gods: Essays in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, prepared for publication by Anne M. Blackburn and Thomas D. Carroll. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
D’Costa, Gavin 1996 The End of ‘Theology’ and ‘Religious Studies’. Theology 99(791): 338–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571X9609900502
Dawes, Gregory W. 1996 Theology and Religious Studies in the University: ‘Some Ambiguities’ Revisited. Religion 26(1): 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1996.0004
2016 The Philosophy of Religion: Religion, Ritual, and Rationality. Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, Dunedin.
Dennett, Daniel C. 2013 Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. W. W. Norton, New York.
Deshpande, Sharad 2015 G. R. Malkani: Reinventing Classical Advaita Ved?nta. In Philosophy in Colonial India, edited by Sharad Deshpande, 119–35. Springer, New Delhi.
Donovan, Peter 1990 Neutrality in Religious Studies. Religious Studies 26(1): 103–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500020230
Ford, David F. 1998 Theology and Religious Studies at the Turn of the Millenium [sic]: Reconceiving the Field. Teaching Theology and Religion 1(1): 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9647.00002
Ford, David F., Ben Quash and Janet Martin Soskice 2005 Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Franzmann, Majella 2008 Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. In Religious Studies: A Global View, edited by Gregory D. Alles, 218–41. Routledge, London.
Green, Nile 2018 The Waves of Heterotopia: Toward a Vernacular Intellectual History of the Indian Ocean. The American Historical Review 123(3): 846–74. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.3.846
Halbfass, Wilhelm 1988 India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Harrison, Peter 1990 ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Isichei, Elizabeth 1993 Some Ambiguities in the Academic Study of Religion. Religion 23(4): 379–90. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1993.1032
Jackson, Robert, and Dermot Killingley 1994 Approaches to Hinduism. John Murray, London.
Killingley, Dermot 2000 A Pygmy Smile: Occasional and Intertextual Poems. Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Killingley, Dermot, and Siew-Yue Killingley 2004 Beginning Sanskrit: A Practical Course based on Graded Reading and Exercises. 2nd edn. Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Lancaster University 2009 Teaching Programme 2009–2010. Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster.
Lash, Nicholas 1996 The Beginning and the End of ‘Religion’. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Lipner, Julius J. 1983 Theology and Religious Studies: Thoughts on a Crisis of Identity. Theology 86(711): 193–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571X8308600306
1988 Theology and Religious Studies. In The Threshold of Theology, edited by Paul Avis, 140–59. Marshall Pickering, Basingstoke.
2005 Love. In Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century, edited by David F. Ford, Ben Quash and Janet Martin Soskice, 90–103. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Loughlin, Gerard 2004 Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology. Blackwell, Oxford.
Marshall, P. J. 1970 The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Martin, Luther H., and Donald Wiebe 2012 Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80(3): 587–97. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfs030
McCauley, Robert N. 2011 Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Milbank, John 1990a The End of Dialogue. In Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by Gavin D’Costa, 174–91. Orbis, Maryknoll, NY.
1990b Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Blackwell, Oxford.
Moore, Albert C. 2001 Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Otago: 1946–2000. An Overview. Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin.
Pearson, M. N. 2010 Connecting the Littorals: Cultural Brokers in the Early Modern Indian Ocean. In Eyes Across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean, edited by Pamila Gupta, Isabel Hofmeyr and M. N. Pearson, 32–47. Unisa, Pretoria.
Preus, James S. 1987 Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Rae, Murray 2008 On Reading Scripture Theologically. Princeton Theological Review 14(1): 13–26.
Rubie?s, Joan-Pau 2000 Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Said, Edward W. 1978 Orientalism. Vintage, New York.
Segal, Robert A. 1994 Hume’s Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion. Religion 24(3): 225–34. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1994.1020
Sharpe, Eric J. 1975 Comparative Religion: A History. Duckworth, London.
Smart, Ninian, John Clayton, Patrick Sherry and Steven T. Katz (eds) 1985 Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West. 3 vols. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 1962 The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind. Macmillan, New York.
Sweetman, Will 2001 Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship. Religion 31(3): 209–24. https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.2001.0341
2003a Hinduism and the History of Religion: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 15(4): 329–53. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006803322697407
2003b Mapping Hinduism: ‘Hinduism’ and the Study of Indian Religions, 1600–1776. Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, Halle.
2014 Retracing Bartholoma?us Ziegenbalg’s Path. In Beyond Tranquebar: Grappling across Cultural Borders in South India, edited by Esther Fihl and A. R. Venkatachalapathy, 304–21. Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad.
2019 The Absent Vedas. Journal of the American Oriental Society 139(4): 781–803. https://doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.139.4.0781
Sweetman, Will, and R. Ilakkuvan 2012 Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholoma?us Ziegenbalg’s Tamil Library. Institut franc?ais de Pondiche?ry, Pondicherry; E?cole franc?aise d’Extre?me Orient, Paris.
Thomsen, Anton 1909 David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. The Monist 19(2): 269–88. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist190919224
Turner, Harold W. 1992 Questions, Hard or Otherwise, for Religious Studies in New Zealand Universities. Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review 24(1): 14–28.
University of Otago 2002 Report of the Panel Reviewing the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Humanities Division, University of Otago, Dunedin.
2008a Self-Review Document. Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin.
2008b Departmental Review: Department of Theology and Religious Studies. University of Otago, Dunedin.
Veitch, James 1991 Establishing an Image and Settling on a Name: The Coming of Age of an Academic Discipline. In Religious Studies in Dialogue: Essays in Honour of Albert C. Moore, edited by Maurice Andrew, Peter Matheson and Simon Rae, 27–35. Otago University Press, Dunedin.
Xavier, A?ngela Barreto, and Ines G. Županov 2015 Catholic Orientalism: Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge (16th–18th Centuries). Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
Published
2020-01-24
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Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Sweetman, W. (2020). Sisyphus and I: Or, Theologians I Have Known in Three Decades as Religionswissenschaftler. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 32(2-3), 145-165. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.40132
