What is Religion?
Reflections from the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion
Hello subscribers and readers! I apologize for the brief hiatus between my first post and this current one. I have been busy pressing my nose to the grindstone to get all of the assignments for my Fall quarter classes which is now finished and with straight As to boot! *applause* *applause* Thank you so very much! I would like to thank the Academy! I am just kidding of course, but seriously, I thought that this second post would be a good opportunity to offer reflections on my experience attending my first annual meeting of another Academy: The American Academy of Religion in San Diego on November 23-26.
The very nature of this annual gathering of scholars of religion is very telling about the nature of the study of religion and of religion itself as a phenomenon and reality. Before I am accused of burying the lead with the title of this post, I will say that the definition and concept of religion is contested, multifamily, and interdisciplinary. While the term “religion” is often understood to be pertaining to some of the largest religious traditions in the world: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as well as Buddhism and Hinduism, there are many other religious groups, traditions, beliefs, and practices that interest scholars of religion.
In fact, there are entire annual meetings in which scholars of religion gather, present each other’s work, and debate the nature of this thing that we call religion. I alone attended units on Esotericism, Political Theology, Critical Theory in the Study of Religion, and Hindu Studies. That is not to mention the dozens of other units and panels that no one person could ever attend! Religion is a very difficult topic to nail down and describe, and that just may be one of the reasons why I am so drawn to its study: there is almost nothing topic in the world that the study of religion cannot engage with.
One of the most famous definitions of religion in the modern world comes from the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant conceived of religion as thoughts and practices that orients the individual and gives them a sense of direction in relation to the rest of the world much like the sun can give one a sense of direction. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a system of symbols that act to provide the religious practitioner with a concept and sense of general order in the world. Definitions such as these have been very influential in the history of the interpretation and study of religion. But even these must be questions.
As anthropologist and scholar of religion Talal Asad argues in his book Genealogies of Religion, there “cannot be a universal definition of religion, not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive process” (29). This is to say that there no definition exists in a vacuum, or a priori, from the historical circumstances in which that definition was pursued. Religion is always fluid and flowing as I said in the introductory post, and AAR is an opportunity for different scholars of different fields to ride the waves together and call into question problematic ways of navigating these waters. I myself a budding scholar attempting to navigate the waters of the study of religion in my own way, and I will continue to include you in this journey as I attempt to guide you into my own sub-field of study Critical Theory. Stay tuned!