10 Reasons to Study Religion

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Martin Marty's Ten Reasons to Study Religion

1. “Religion motivates most killing in the world today.” Any number of violent confrontations today have an underlying religious dimension. These conflicts can be found from the Middle East to Afghanistan and from India to Malaysia to the United States. Politicians and citizens alike must pay attention to the involvement of religion in numerous violent political, economic, and social movements. Additionally, Marty notes that religion may kill in more subtle ways, such as oppression and repression.

2. "Religion contributes to most healing in the world today.” In the field of medicine in both the modern and the undeveloped world, religion often provides the motivation for those who help, and to the extent that peacemaking and reconciliation are a kind of healing, religion often plays a constructive role. Numerous hospitals, clinics, and health organizations globally have their origins in the world's religions.

3. “Religion is globally pervasive; there is a great deal of it.” The vast majority of our planet's 6 billion people identify with one religion or another. Ironically, this situation exists in spite of the supposed secularization of modern societies. This irony is put in perspective by Marty's pithy comment: “In the academy you get to study why, in a world we choose to call secular, religion grows and intensifies.”

4. “Religion has a long past, and its tentacles are culture-wide.” A great deal of the world's art, architecture, music, literature, and dance has its source in religion. Even much so-called “secular art” employs religious questions, images, and themes. In this sense, religion has been called the “soul of culture.”

5. “Religion is hard to define and thus a tantalizing subject.” Most religious studies textbooks try to define religion all the way from “a conventional and institutional definition” to “a label for every kind of ‘ultimate concern.'” Thus, as Marty notes, “religion” can be defined so vaguely that critics declare, “if everything is religious, nothing is.” The study of religion, therefore, inquires deeply into “the limits and scope of religion,” carefully trying to decipher the mystery of this vast subject. And, as Marty adds, “that inquiry inspires many others.”

6. “Religion, however defined, helps explain many other activities.” The dialogical fields of study, such as the psychology of religion, religion and psychological studies, religion and literature, the Bible as literature, sociology of religion, religion and society, religious social ethics, and philosophy of religion, are solid indications of the interrelatedness of religion with its cultural contexts. Another example in that same vein is evident in the work of Max Weber, a major pioneer in sociology. His influential book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) deals with the relationship between religion and economics. Some philosophers, like Karl Marx, might say that we explain religion by explaining economics, but Weber suggests it is the other way around. Rather than reducing religion to something else that “explains” it, the study of religion may lead to an understanding of religion as a unique arena of human experience, which in turn helps us to explain may other facets of human experience.

7. “Religion is protean.” Referring the Greek mythological figure Proteus, who could change shapes at will, Marty is pointing out that we study a broad range of human activities when we look at people's religions. “In the name of religion people dance, act, make music, fight wars, abuse some, liberate others, seek to effect justice, reinforce prejudice, fight addiction, and do other. . . activities.” So when one studies religion, one discovers a broad range of human activities, all of which are worth studying.

8. “Religion is one of the most revealing dimensions of pluralism.” That is, when we look at the many different ways that people live lives of meaning and purpose all over the world, religion is one of the major points of difference we discover. Even in our own multicultural society, the plurality of religions is one of the key elements of diversity. Thus “understanding the lover or the neighbor or the enemy often demands knowledge of religion.”

9. The study of religion is practical. In the political realm, in the realm of advertising, in personal relations, not taking religious sensibilities into account can lead to ruin. It would be a joke, if not an insult, to advertise to a Jewish community your butcher shop's sale on pork chops. Similarly, it might not be a good idea for a U.S. diplomat to schedule a high-level meeting with Arabian politicians on a Friday at noon. Muslims have special prayers at this time, and Jews do not eat pork.

10. “Religion as a subject matter or a dimension of culture has attracted a scholarly cohort of experts.” That is, when one studies religion, one sits beside many other great scholarly minds that have become embroiled in this fascinating quest. “People have been thinking about the modern study of religion for a century,” Marty notes, and the sources, commentaries, reformations, and revivals of religious ideas stretch back to the beginnings of civilized history. You meet here literally the greatest and most influential minds of all time.

Taken from Understanding Religion in a Global Society, by Richter, Rapple, et al, Wadsworth, 2005.