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From Religious Contact to Scientific Comparison and Back: Some Methodological Considerations on Comparative Perspectives in the Science of Religion

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The Dynamics of Transculturality

Abstract

(1) After dealing with some of the challenges in the study of religion and with the operation called “comparison,” the article focuses on (2) thoughts on the relation between object- and metalanguage, followed by (3) remarks on comparison from the perspective of a sociology of knowledge, and (4) concludes with some considerations on the emergence of regional religious fields and of a global religious field.

Ad 1) “Eurocentrism” might be avoided if we look at religious contact and the entangled history of religions, by which religious fields are constituted in empiricism. From this perspective, comparison is first and foremost a part of the empirical history of religions itself. However, academic comparison must refer to certain analytic frames of references.

Ad 2) Academic metalanguage can best correspond with religious-historical material and avoid a sterile scientism when it is linked with the reflection that emerges during religious contact and in which an object-linguistic awareness of the religious arises.

Ad 3) Comparative research on religion might be based on a sociological frame of reference, namely on the question of how a religion as a system of symbols generates forms of institutionalization and vice versa. Different social forms of religion are discussed.

Ad 4) Regional religious fields and the emerging global religious field emerge by establishing inner and outer boundaries. Inner boundaries form through the labeling of Self and Other––as an amalgam of social formations and religious semantics––which establish a discursive field. Outer boundaries are formed by distinctions and interactions between religion and other societal fields.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cf. (McCutcheon 2007); (Kippenberg and von Stuckrad 2003); (Fitzgerald 2000).

  2. 2.

    The research consortium is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Its research programme focuses on the fact that the formation, establishment, spread, and further development of the major religious traditions (as well as other religious traditions) have been affected by mutual influences, and that the formal unity of the history of religions mainly consists of religious contacts, i.e. of mutual perceptions of religious traditions as religious entities that constitute regional religious fields and in the long-run a global religious field. Hence, the consortium primarily conducts research on inter- and intra-religious relations between Asia and Europe from the first millennium BCE up to the present day.

  3. 3.

    However, this distinction does not mean that any comparison of religion, as described above, could not become subject to scientific reflection.

  4. 4.

    Cf. Edmund Hardy (1901); Jordan (1905); as a contemporary history of comparative religion see Sharpe (1986); Kippenberg (1997); and Krech (2002).

  5. 5.

    On the relationship between tradition and innovation, cf. (Williams and Jaffee 1992).

  6. 6.

    This is the case, for example, with Luckmann‘s concept of “invisible religion” (Luckmann 1967); however, to an even greater extent in the adaptation of this theory.

  7. 7.

    Cf., for example, the differentiation between apophatic and kataphatic in Christian theology.

  8. 8.

    “Das Sakrale kondensiert gewissermaßen an der Grenze, die die Einheit der Unterscheidung von transzendent und immanent darstellt” (The sacred condenses to a certain extent at the nexus representing the unification of the distinction between transcendent and immanent) (Luhmann 2000, 82). Although meant differently, this situation is occasionally referred to in aesthetic literature as a “Realsymbol” (real or genuine symbol) (cf. Steiner 1990).

  9. 9.

    See also the comments on family resemblances.

  10. 10.

    The transformation from archaic societies to advanced civilizations is also described in the theory of the Axial Age as proposed by Karl Jaspers and as reintroduced by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1986).

  11. 11.

    On the US-American context, cf. (Schieder 1987); on the civil religion within Germany, cf. (Vögele 1994).

  12. 12.

    On the latter, see (Luckmann 1998, 399 ff.).

  13. 13.

    Cf. (Beckford 1973), and (Wallis 1984).

  14. 14.

    The transition certainly is flowing, since only typological demarcations are concerned.

  15. 15.

    Cult communities and sect movements are summarized in the notion of “halfly institutionalized communities” according to Luckmann (1967). On the transitions between the social forms of sect and religious movement, cf. (Wilson 1990).

  16. 16.

    Different world religions, such as Islam or Hinduism, did not establish any formal religious organization similar to that of the Christian popular church; see (Kehrer 1998, 152 ff.). Admittedly an ecclesiastical organization, in the sense of Max Weber, has been established alongside Christianity by the Islamic religion, by Buddhism in the form of the Lamaism, by Mahdism––although in a more confined sense, because it is de facto nationally bound, by Judaism, and apparently already by the late Egyptian hierocracy (Weber 1985, 693).

  17. 17.

    The approach of multiple modernities rightly calls attention to this trend.

  18. 18.

    Cf. (Haußig and Scherer 2003), and (Schmitz 1996).

  19. 19.

    Cf. (Kollmar-Paulenz 2007).

  20. 20.

    Building on the work of the member of the research consortium Knut Martin Stünkel.

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  1. Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Volkhard Krech

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  1. IKOS, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Antje Flüchter

  2. Research Center for Distributional Conflict and Globalisation, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jivanta Schöttli

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Krech, V. (2015). From Religious Contact to Scientific Comparison and Back: Some Methodological Considerations on Comparative Perspectives in the Science of Religion. In: Flüchter, A., Schöttli, J. (eds) The Dynamics of Transculturality. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09740-4_3

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