The Study of Religion and the Problem of Institutional Racism

In May 2016, Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times which challenged the exclusion of non-western voices in Anglophone philosophy departments (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html). They suggested that such practices of exclusion rested upon institutional racism which had its foundation in western colonialism and normativity. The exclusion of, say, Buddhist philosophical voices from departments of philosophy were/are always value judgement calls – calls which suggested that Buddhist thinkers were not engaged in activity that was completely rational and/or that the methods used by Buddhist thinkers were/are not completely rational (Garfield, 2017, xviii).

I do not wish to engage in a systematic examination of study of religion departmental biases here; however, I do believe it is justified to suggest that similar institutional racism exists within our departments. That is, study of religion departments suffer from a groupthink which is governed by the historical legacies of western colonialism and western hegemony, which often means thinkers and schools of thought who seemingly deviate from paradigmatic norms are either modified to conform to those norms or are ignored altogether. It could be said that such a characterisation is unfair, as studies of non-western schools of thought are not excluded in study of religion departments as they are in most philosophy departments. For example, there are many classes at the undergraduate level which allow students to study Buddhism, Hinduism and so-called indigenous traditions. But the question is whether one is studying those traditions – assuming they can be grouped in such a way – as curiosities to be explained through the use of predominately western theories, or whether they are studied as equal dialectic partners, in which the conventional logic of such traditions influences us in ways which cause us to change our academic practice.

As Garfield (2015) describes in his book Engaging in Buddhist Philosophy, again coming at the issue from a philosophical perspective:

By “doing Buddhist philosophy,” I do not mean developing an account of the history of Buddhist philosophy – the exegetical project of figuring out what Buddhist philosophers said. Nor do I mean the mere assessment of the cogency of Buddhist philosophical arguments. Instead, I mean the attempt to address serious philosophical problems, of interest in their own right, some arising from the Buddhist tradition itself, some from the West, in conversation with the Buddhist tradition, taking it seriously as a source of puzzles and of insights, and taking its horizon of concerns seriously as a backdrop for philosophical reflection. (320)

A specific problem for us is that within the study of religion this way of studying traditions has been deemed inappropriate by critical religion scholars. The legitimacy of this sense of inappropriateness is often achieved by critical religion scholars using multiple, though interdependent, dichotomies which crave out their identity and position in the academy. For instance, critical religion scholars might argue that Garfield’s approach uses an insider’s, or even a theological, point of view which uncritically caretakes the Buddhist tradition. However, such dichotomies do not provide a justified explanation as to why such engagement is inappropriate.

For instance, Craig Martin (2012), in his A Critical Introduction to The Study of Religion, uses the insider/outsider dichotomy to argue that critical religion scholars, if they are doing their job right, are ‘outsiders, not insiders’ (18). He suggests that critical scholars ‘take it for granted that as scholars of religion our job is to study religions, understand how they work, and so on, not to advance religious agendas or convert people to a particular religious tradition’ (18; emphases in original). But Martin’s conceptualisation of insider/outsider dichotomy is logically problematic.

Martin argues that the point of his critical scholarship ‘is not to make readers more or less religious – my goal instead is to help them see how societies are constructed and maintained, especially when those societies contain oppression or domination’ (18). What is interesting is that Martin also commits to the standard critical religion thesis that the category of religion is socially constructed and does not point to an inherently existing object outside of the social context of language construction (1-6). The question, then, is how does Martin maintain this commitment to the constructed character of the category of religion – whose application Martin describes as ‘arbitrary and unsophisticated’ (6) – while also building his critical academic identity on the insider/outsider dichotomy?

If there are no religions out in the real world, as they are instead figments of unsophisticated academic and popular imagination (6), how does Martin demarcate the boundaries which separate religious insiders and outsiders? To do so would require that one, to a certain extent, essentialise popular understandings of the category of religion and its others – i.e. the secular. But this flies in the face of Martin’s claim that critical scholarship should help others to realise the socially constructed nature of reality and how it often betrays the power relations and interests of the institutions and people involved in such construction.

Thus, certain scholars of religion, and the approaches to religion they champion, can unknowingly support institutional structures which prohibit the possibility of a more inclusive academic debate – and often for no good reason. Here, it is important to point out that I am not making a sweeping generalisation that the whole of the study of religion is characterised by a refusal to engage with non-western thinkers and theories. However, I am suggesting that certain thinkers and theories - and I am thinking in particular here of Buddhist thinkers and theories - are excluded for weak reasons, and this feeds into a wider problem within academia were non-western voices are either not taken seriously or not listened to at all.

But if we are to engage with more voices from outside of the west, we must be sure that such engagement is  grounded in the logic of inclusivity and not just diversity. The latter has been critiqued as tokenistic, where the mere presence of marginalised groups or people is seen as an achievement. The problem is dominant frameworks are not sufficiently challenged by the presence of new, previously marginalised, groups. Conversely, the former references those efforts made to modify dominant structures in line with the reasoning, workings and ideas of newly incorporated groups.

Thus, if the study of religion is going to move away from the institutional racism that affects it and other departments, a tightrope is going to have to be walked. Such a task may be aided by using historical-critical methods, but it is important not to assume that objective interpretations can be achieved. The core point is one of reflexivity – to acknowledge our positions of power and work towards correctives to such imbalances. In this way, we can not only start to readjust the balance of power within our departments but begin to appreciate the value of theories that arise from outside of the west and their ability to craft new intellectual horizons; a value which is ignored if they are only treated as exotic historical curiosities.

Jack Lewis Graham