How can we objectively research about religion

Indeed, the basic insight we should have in beginning our research is to recognize that while striving for objectivity is extremely important and valuable, compete objectivity is impossible and perhaps not always desirable. Instead, we should strive for using proper methodologies that will help us understand religion in a social context and be reflective about our own biases as social beings.

In the next section , we will examine how you can do just that. Studying Faith Part: 1 What methodologies can I use to study religious… 2 Is it possible to study religion objectively? Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email this link. Part of a report:. What methodologies can I use to study religious groups?

Is it possible to study religion objectively? What are the guidelines for objective, reliable and valid research? What are the advantages and disadvantages of studying my own religion? Studying religion might make you happier. Taking religion courses is a chance to figure out why people are religious and participate in religious practices. A recent study found that Americans—regardless of which religion they practice—are quite likely to pray when they have to make decisions.

A minor in religion is a chance to explore why religion matters to people. Studying religion helps you understand different cultures. Ever seen a man wearing a turban?

Ever notice the variety of churches in your neighborhood? Ever read a newspaper story about a new temple in town? Religion surrounds our daily lives and studying types of religion can help you understand many types of differences that are visible all around you. There are, however, problems lurking beneath the surface of this brief summary of the broad principles of Religious Studies.

The first of these relates to the claim that students of religion can achieve an understanding of religions of which they have no personal experience. The claim that it is possible to study religion adequately from a disinterested position has been hotly debated. Can the understanding of the observer achieve the same level of insight and authority as the participant in a religion? No serious student of religion can avoid confronting this question.

The outsider cannot escape depending to an extent upon insights from insiders when studying a particular religion. An outsider who has never been through a particular ritual, for example, can only give an account based upon observation and third-party testimony.

Observers may be more inclined to rely upon abstractions and generalizations, possibly from sacred books, in the absence of direct experience of the religion as practiced. Yet, insiders are fallible and may have their own reasons for describing their experience in a particular way. Insiders will not necessarily agree with each other.

There is also the further issue of whether the experience of one religion contributes to understanding other forms of religion. For example, does personal experience of the practice of prayer in one religion make a student more sensitive when studying prayer or a practice like meditation in a different religion?

Is a Muslim who prays better qualified to understand a Buddhist who meditates and vice versa, than, say, a humanist who does neither? Or should students who are not members of the religion being considered simply be regarded as outsiders, whether they are agnostics or members of a different religious faith? Would someone standing outside all religions, but interested in their study, bring an openness and sympathy that a person with a particular religious commitment would find hard to match?

If you decide that we should not generalize and that it will depend upon the skill and sensitivity of each student, then you are tacitly accepting that being religious in itself is not a necessary qualification for a student of religion.

In fact, as we have seen, that is one of the principles involved in the approach of Religious Studies. Fervent followers of religion and militant atheists both have the capacity to become insightful students of religion—as long as they are willing to exercise the self-discipline necessary to ensure that their own beliefs do not distort their treatment of the beliefs of others.

Yet, the argument that it is possible to study religion effectively without drawing upon personal religious experience has been challenged. The implications of this view for the student have been spelled out in no uncertain terms:.

The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further; for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who can recollect the emotions of his adolescence, the discomforts of indigestion, or, say, social feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings.

For if religion is different in kind from a secular ideology , then it cannot be understood on the same terms as other worldviews, but only on its own terms by those who have known some sort of religious experience of their own. Is acceptance of the claim that religion is autonomous or sui generis consistent with the broad principles of Religious Studies? We might wish to investigate the claim that religion is autonomous or sui generis as part of our study of religion.

Yet, we should be aware of the implications of rejecting the sui generis argument. In so doing we have made a statement about the nature of religion: that, for the purposes of study, we are assuming that it is possible to study religion in much the same way as we study other aspects of human experience. On the other hand, those who view religion as sui generis face the problems of identifying what makes it so which, given the varied forms of religion, is not easy , and also of convincing us that a person who has experienced one form of religion may apply this experience in the analysis of another.

The difference of opinion between those who hold to the sui generis view of religion and those who share the position adopted by Ninian Smart is profound. The fact that the debate continues leads us into another problem in the study of religion in response to which Religious Studies has adopted a characteristic position in terms of method. This is the problem of determining the truth of religion. I noted earlier that differences between the truth claims made by religions has led those who practice Religious Studies to avoid premature judgements when dealing with questions relating to the truth and value of particular religions.

By seeming to by-pass truth claims, you may feel that what I have been describing as Religious Studies avoids what many would regard as the purpose of religion—to deal in truths. This is a difficult area to cover briefly, but let me at least try to explain why Religious Studies takes the line that it does.

Different societies tolerate different codes of morality. Religions, which typically claim to reveal truths, often make different claims and promote different codes of behavior. Can we just assume that these variations are due to the differences in the social and historical contexts in which these religions are found?

Some people have argued that all religions contain a measure of certain universal truths, but have taken different outward forms because of the needs of different human temperaments and different social conditions. Some contemporary Hindus are wedded to this idea.

There is even an old Indian story used to illustrate it. Wearied by the conflicting opinions of his court philosophers and their mutual intolerance, a king made them watch blind men approach an elephant from different angles and, using their sense of touch, attempt to identify what creature they were being presented with.

Not surprisingly, the blind man who grabbed the tail arrived at a different conclusion from the one who embraced a leg. Does the message of the story provide guidelines that we might adopt in our role as critical students of religion? The problem is that, in the study of religion, there is no human arbiter comparable to that of the sighted in the story of the blind men and the elephant. Truth claims—for example, about the existence of God—are made within particular religions, and it is between religions that the differences lie.

Religions start, however, from different assumptions and appeal to different authorities. Finding a way that will enable us to judge the respective merits of their truth claims is, therefore, extremely difficult.

For example, religious traditions often appeal to a sacred book whose authority is not recognized either by people of other faiths or by people of no religious faith. Those who accept the authority of a sacred book are unlikely to accept the judgements of those who deny its authority. A person whose conviction rests on foundations such as these may well turn round and argue that an outsider who attempts to judge the truth of a particular religion without such an experience simply does not understand the religion and is thus simply not qualified to judge its truth claims.

I remember well talking with a Muslim who has generously given of his time over several years to answer my questions about Islam. Trying to resolve the problem of how to test religious truth claims continues to vex scholars and religious devotees alike. Those who practice Religious Studies recognize the full importance of this problem, but do not believe that all study of religion should be suspended until it is solved.