FROM THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS TO INTERFAITH STUDIES

A Theological Educator’s Exercise in Adaptation

Deanna Ferree Womack

The construction of a field of interfaith studies is both a pressing need and an exciting opportunity to build upon and move beyond the achievements of academic programs in theology and religion. Despite tensions between the central goals of Christian theology (the articulation of knowledge about God) and religious studies (the value-neutral investigation of religion), both fields have had an immense impact upon my understanding of how and why one ought to study religion. Yet, like other scholars, I was drawn to interfaith studies as I considered questions that traditionally neither comparative religion nor systematic theology has sought to answer. Although it is a multidisciplinary field with implications that reach far beyond the humanities and social sciences, interfaith studies can become an established area of research and teaching only in conversation with these two existing fields. As a theological educator trained in the history of religions, I look to interfaith studies as a third way of approaching questions of human religiosity and spirituality in the classroom and on the increasingly diverse campuses of American institutions of higher education.

Indeed, as I aim to demonstrate in this chapter, this emerging field might become a point of connection and reconciliation between religious studies and theology as it equips students with “the knowledge base and skill set needed to engage religious diversity in a way that promotes peace, stability, and cooperation.”¹ What sets interfaith studies apart is the explicit aim to make such competencies available to students who “orient around religion differently.”² This goal has been hampered by the ongoing divisions between theology and religious studies. Although university programs in religion attract students with diverse religious and spiritual orientations, the field has mandated objectivity as a guard against religiously motivated impositions. As a consequence, the sort of knowledge privileged in religious studies courses is often cognitive rather than affective, limiting the practical implications of students’ studies for interreligious engagement inside and outside of the classroom.

Christian seminaries and schools of theology face the opposite problem. As the purpose of theological education is to train Christian leaders for service in the world, many seminaries now include the study of world religions or interfaith dialogue in their curricula. Yet such courses often take place in religious enclaves of students and faculty with similar Christian commitments or denominational affiliations. Even in schools with significant religious diversity or in seminaries that partner with Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist institutions, the conversation remains limited by its theological nature.³ In contrast, interfaith studies offers possibilities for a learning environment of disciplinary diversity and religious plurality. This is apparent from several recent college and seminary programs that take an innovative approach to interfaith studies, some of which are featured in this volume.⁴

In order to highlight the potential contributions of interfaith studies, this chapter places the academic study of religion in historical perspective. Focusing primarily on the North American context, it considers how the pioneers of interfaith studies might learn from and move beyond the methods, motivations, and accomplishments of previous generations of scholars. I begin with an overview of the shifting patterns in approaches to religion in the modern West. The second section explores how this trajectory evolved into the present-day movement of certain theological schools toward programs of interfaith engagement. The final section considers what the history of religions and models of interreligious theological education together might contribute to interfaith studies as a distinct academic field.

SHIFTING PATTERNS IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION

The genealogy of Western Christian thought about “non-Christian” religions is important because of the dominant and enduring influence of European and American Christian scholars upon the study of world religions. Even today, Protestant assumptions about religion still color much of the academic and activist work on interfaith relations in the US. I begin this historical survey with the emergence of the modern study of religion in the nineteenth century. It was then that scholars and missionaries took up the Enlightenment concept of world religions and contributed to a global process of “religionization” and new ways of teaching about global faith traditions.⁵ I am not concerned here with the various prevailing theories of religion.⁶ Nor am I concerned with the pioneering scholars of the history of religions (Religionswissenshaft, also known as comparative religion) such as Mircea Eliade, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Ninian Smart, and Joseph Kitagawa.⁷ Rather, I am interested in historical shifts in the study of religion and the implications of such trends for relations between individuals of different faiths.

One key moment in American Christian engagement with “other” religions was the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions at the Chicago World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition).⁸ This significant gathering revealed a growing receptivity on the part of American Protestants (who dominated the leadership and constituted the majority of the attendees) to “foreign religious ideas or persons in the last decade of the nineteenth century.”⁹ This open disposition nevertheless operated under the same imperialistic approach of the larger Columbian Exposition, which put the achievements of the United States and Europe on display along with the cultures of the world that Western travelers had “discovered.”¹⁰ At the parliament, representatives of non-Christian traditions delivered 41 of the 192 papers, and the Christian speakers included scholars in the emergent field of comparative religion (for example, Max Müller, the German-born Orientalist) and foreign missionaries (for example, Henry Harris Jessup of the American Syria Mission).¹¹ Both groups—scholars of religion and missionaries—had contributed substantially to knowledge production about religion in the decades leading up to the World’s Fair. In the 1870s, when comparative religion gained much public attention, the movement of American missions also rose to new heights, with a post–Civil War increase in personnel and publications on “other” religions.¹² As a result of such traveling scholars and missionaries who encountered the religions of the world in Africa and Asia, the typical Western categorization of humans into Christians, Jews, Muslims, and “heathens” shifted, in what Tomoko Masuzawa has termed the “invention of world religions.”¹³

The way Western Christians conceived of other religions and their adherents was changing, yet as new discourses on religious plurality replaced claims of Christianity’s universality in the first half of the twentieth century, the logic of European supremacy remained.¹⁴

Although the agendas of scholars and missionaries were not always aligned, the study of religion in American institutions was still tinged with an air of Christian superiority, parallel to the ethos of the World’s Parliament of Religions, which sought unity among the religions while also lifting up the ideal of America as the “redeemer nation” and of Western Christianity as a force for uniting all religions under one truth.¹⁵ It would be decades after the parliament before those scholars who advocated an objective approach to studying world religions could carve out a place to do so in an environment not wholly dominated by denominational ideologies or Christian theological presuppositions. In an effort to avoid ecclesiastical control, university reformers first contributed to the growth of the “science of religion,” which flourished in American institutions between 1890 and 1930. Such efforts to apply scientific methods to the study of religion did not aim to exclude religion from American higher education, however. Thus, this period saw “not the secularization of education but rather a ‘desectarianizing’ of it.”¹⁶

Interest in the study of religion surged again following World War II. It was only in the 1960s, however, that scholars succeeded in establishing the first departments of religion in public universities and colleges in the US, despite concerns that such programs might violate the separation of religion and state.¹⁷ With emphasis upon the “pursuit of objectivity” and a rejection of apologetics, religious studies advocated a sensitivity to “non-Christian” religious experiences that was not often demonstrated in Christian theological seminaries or in missionary training courses in comparative religion.¹⁸ Although tied, at least initially, to the sort of Euro-American hegemony that Masuzawa identified in her study, over time the field of religious studies opened doors for scholars and students of all religious backgrounds or none. In this sense, as a field that (in theory) does not require or privilege any theological affiliation, it offers an important model for interfaith studies to build upon, in a way that approaches to world religions and interfaith engagement within most theological seminaries cannot. Because classical approaches to religious studies privilege cognitive abilities over practical application, however, I find it helpful to examine how Christian discourses on the religions and concrete practices of interfaith engagement in theological institutions have shifted since the late nineteenth century.

FROM THEOLOGIES OF EXCLUSION TO INTERFAITH ENGAGEMENT

While the Western Christian missionary enterprise of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is one source for contemporary American Christian feelings of rivalry with “other” religious traditions, the missionary encounter also contributed much to the present-day movement for interreligious dialogue. Besides prompting an increase in scholarship and teaching on non-Christian religions in theological schools by the early twentieth century, the publications of missionaries and mission supporters also provided a range of views on the subject of world religions. Many missionaries were profoundly changed by experiences of living among Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, and by their Asian and African Christian colleagues’ more appreciative characterizations of non-Western traditions. This prompted a shift in some Christian theologies of religion from theological exclusivism (a belief in the absolute impossibility of salvation outside of Christianity) to more inclusive orientations in the early twentieth century.

Take, for example, the work of William Temple Gairdner, an internationally renowned scholar and missionary leader in Egypt, who came to believe that the Christian gospel was meant to fulfill rather than to destroy the religious values of Islam.¹⁹ By the time the International Missionary Council convened its famous conference in Jerusalem in 1928, such fulfillment theologies had cultivated greater openness within the ecumenical-missionary movement toward the spiritual value of world religions.²⁰ Here we find echoes of the call of the World Parliament of Religions to “unite all religions against irreligion.”²¹ Gairdner’s colleague Constance Padwick took this emphasis further as her encounter with popular Muslim piety and her study of Sufi prayer booklets with Egyptian friends led her to seek “a basis for Christian-Muslim encounter through the experience of the life of worship rather than through questions of doctrine or apologetics.” Padwick suggested that Christians might incorporate into their own practices some liturgical expressions of Islam like the basmala, the invocation central to the Islamic prayer-rite (“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate”).²² By recognizing their theological affinities and common devotional experiences with members of other faiths, such missionaries (along with local Christians around the world) laid the groundwork for the more formal commitments to interfaith dialogue that emerged after the mid-twentieth century. These included the Second Vatican Council’s affirmation of non-Christian religions and the World Council of Churches’ first multifaith dialogue session in 1970 between Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian participants in Ajaltoun, Lebanon.

With the influence of such early endeavors toward formal dialogue and the growing religious plurality of American society spurred by the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965, theological schools began turning their attention beyond the study of world religions to the establishment of curricular programs in interfaith dialogue. This shift is relevant for interfaith studies because the goals of such dialogue initiatives are different than the traditional goals of the history of religions or of systematic theology, reaching beyond academic inquiry to life practices, as interreligious awareness becomes essential to the formation of Christian leadership in the twenty-first century.²³

In a 2009 study of 150 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theological institutions in the United States, the Center for Multifaith Education at Auburn Theological Seminary found “a surprising and impressive range of academic course offerings about other faith traditions.” Nearly half of the schools surveyed offered five or more courses in this area, indicating a commitment to promoting students’ deep understanding of religious traditions different from their own.²⁴ Some scholars in these institutions—like Paul Knitter at Union Theological Seminary, Richard Fox Young at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Diana Eck and Francis Clooney at Harvard Divinity School—are building upon long legacies of the Christian study of religions within their institutions.²⁵ Other schools have developed new degree programs or centers for interfaith engagement since the year 2000, like the multifaith doctor of ministry degree offered by New York Theological Seminary in conjunction with Auburn Theological Seminary, the Master of Theological Studies program in global religions at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, Catholic Theological Union’s Catholic-Muslim Studies Program, and the MA degrees offered through Graduate Theological Union’s Institute of Buddhist Studies, Center for Islamic Studies, and Center for Jewish Studies.²⁶ Still other theological schools, including Hartford Seminary, Claremont School of Theology, and Andover Newton Theological School, have transformed traditional Christian theological education into interreligious theological programs. Hartford offers an Islamic Chaplaincy Program and master’s degrees with a focus in Islamic studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, and Claremont has trained pastors, imams, and rabbis in collaboration with the Islamic Center of Southern California and the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. Andover Newton’s long-term partnership with Hebrew College led to its Center for Inter-Religious and Communal Leadership, and more recently the school launched a Master of Arts program in global interreligious leadership.²⁷ In each of these cases, theological educators have given significant attention to the way that interfaith sensitivity and leadership should be conceived of and taught in seminaries to Christian students and—in select interreligious programs—to future Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist leaders. Although such initiatives carry great potential for promoting peace, stability, and interfaith cooperation, their target audience remains limited to the clergy and to specialists in theology. In the final section below, I consider how interfaith studies might achieve a broader impact by building upon and integrating the work of theology and religious studies.

ADAPTING HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY MODELS FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION

Pioneers of interfaith studies today have the opportunity to pick and choose from earlier approaches to the study of religion and to adapt them to the needs of undergraduate and graduate students who will not major in religion or theology. Adaptation means that we need not start from scratch and also that we have the freedom to avoid becoming entrenched in old ways of doing things. We can be open to contemporary needs and experiences rather than limited by the contours of established academic fields and by methodological rivalries. While we face the daunting challenge of integrating interfaith studies into the academy, I also believe that we can make use of a space on the margins to accomplish what our predecessors have failed to do in the area of multifaith relations.²⁸ I will conclude with four points of guidance toward using insight from theology and religious studies to nurture effective interfaith leaders.

First, as an adaptive discipline, interfaith studies has the potential to transcend the tension between religious studies and theology with regard to religious confessionalism. In interfaith studies, a student is not required to leave her faith at the door, but she is expected to learn how to listen to the perspectives of her classmates and of the religious communities that the class engages together. The Enlightenment dichotomy between public facts and private belief could be challenged in such courses, while each student also learns to be one participant at the table of many religious and spiritual traditions rather than presuming to speak for everyone’s theological truth. In cases where the scholars, instructors, or students of interfaith studies represent the dominant Protestant majority in the US, special care will have to be taken not to project a Christian or Eurocentric viewpoint. This is just as important for Christian-affiliated institutions as for state-funded secular universities.

Second, interfaith studies can place front and center the pressing issues of diversity and participation that many scholars are still working to integrate into long-established fields. For example, feminist/womanist/mujerista theologies remain subcategories of systematic theology and are not fully incorporated into the traditional curriculum in many seminaries. We have the opportunity to create a field where “women’s issues” are not merely the concern of some, but where women’s voices are a natural and expected part of the pluralism that interfaith studies seeks to cultivate. The same would be true also of many other perspectives that have been marginalized (including LGBTQ, non-Western, and liberation theologies) and of newer subjects of exploration like interreligious theology that remain outside traditional areas of study.²⁹

Third, interfaith studies can become a bridge linking the question of religion to STEM fields and pre-professional degree programs that no longer require students to show any knowledge of religious and theological studies. It may even be that the addition of interfaith studies into religious studies programs could add to the attractiveness of such departments that have sought in recent years to justify the need for religious study as a supplement to other majors. Rather than making the argument that a religious studies course might be helpful for a career outside of the humanities, interfaith studies courses would train pre-med students in an interreligious competency that is directly relevant to their field and equip business majors with a skill set for communicating with diverse clientele, for example.

Finally, while breaking from patterns that are detrimental to dialogue and collaboration, we do not have to give up valuable principles that have already been established in the study of religions and interreligious engagement. In my own teaching on the history of religions and interfaith relations, these principles include the following:

• The history of religions principle of seeking to understand a religious community on its own terms. (Interfaith studies might challenge students and scholars to become empathetic listeners seeking to understand each community studied or each individual in the classroom.)

• The history of religions distinction between emic (the perspective of participants or insiders) and etic (outside theories) approaches to a religious tradition.³⁰ (Scholars of interfaith studies should not make an independent judgment on the reality of a religious tradition but should reflect upon and recognize their own values and biases while also learning from others. Moving beyond the insider-outsider dichotomy, this means working together to build a common life.)

• The theological language of formation (faith formation or ministerial formation). (Interfaith studies courses should provide leadership formation for professionals in a multifaith world.)

• New theological initiatives in interreligious learning. (Interfaith studies can cultivate an interreligious or interfaith learning environment that goes beyond comparative theological reflection.)

Thus, whereas Christian studies of world religions developed in service of world missions, and religious studies emerged due to the need for non-apologetic study of religious traditions, interfaith studies is a response to the growing plurality of American society. Young people—whether they are religious studies majors and theologians or not—will need to demonstrate interreligious awareness in their private and professional relationships. Rather than reinventing old academic and cultural patterns, the success of interfaith studies will be tied to the next generation’s ability to live out the values of pluralism in a multifaith world.