The Ideology of Religious Studies

Fitzgerald's bk is an example of the widespread feeling of uneasiness in a variety of academic fields concerning supposed neutral positions from which to evaluate the data in their respective fields. With scholars coming from a variety of incompatible metaphysical and other philosophical commitments it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to provide a neutral standpoint from which to adjudicate rival claims. In short, the term "religion" cannot possibly pick out some theory neutral concept with clearly necessary and sufficient conditions. The author persuasively argues that if religion is to function as a useful and neutral term it ends up covering so many phenomena as to loose any meaning. (Is Marxism a religion?, Gardening?, etc.) He treats various attempts to save the concept of "religion" such as Wittgenstein's Family Resemblance theory and I believe shows that such attempts fail because the Family "resemblance" is stretched so far as to be "useless." We are much better of, the author concludes, with dividing up the analytical work that the concept of religion supposedly did and assigning that work to a variety of fields.The one major draw back of the work is that much of the authors' argument is steeped, he thinks necessarily, in a Marxist or Critical Theorist framework. Which is great if one is a Marxist. But the argument could be made just as easily without the Marxist framework and jargon. If you can look past the Marxist framing of the argument, the book offers a good argument for two possible directions. Either the re-theologizing relative to some theology of religious studies (a route that the author doesn't seem to want take) or of getting rid of the concept of religion altogether, the authors preferred route. Those interested in parallel debates in contemporary Analytic philosophy over the concept of Justification (see Alston's "Epistemic Desiderata" [article]) or debates over Truth Pluralism and relativism (see Lynch's "Truth in Context" [book]) will find data here and parallel arguments. Also those of more Continental persuasion will find this text germane to the debates over realism/anti-realism (Rorty & Putnam), "Play" in Derrida, and problems in Semiotics/Structuralism.