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Within the modern study of religion the division between philosophy of religion and the history of religions — long regarded as a truism insofar as it reflects the distinction between universal and particular — has become increasingly blurred in recent years with the growing influence of cultural and critical theory on the humanities and social sciences. Unlike the earlier paradigmatic split between theology and anthropology (or social science methodology), cultural theory has helped not only to dismantle well worn dualisms such as religion/politics, theism/atheism, sacred/secular, but more importantly has helped to narrow the gap between academic practices and cultural practices such as religion that scholars seek to study (Davaney 2002: 140). That is to say, cultural theory has simultaneously problema-tized and challenged essentialist and theological tendencies (such as dreams of absolute principles, supernatural origins, ahistorical authorities, pure traditions etc.) as well as scholars' claims to methodological objectivity and impartiality, since the academy far from being a site of neutral value-free analysis, is itself thoroughly implicated in cultural realities (Davaney 2002; Taylor 1999: 13–16). Indeed in what might seen as a reversal of critical theory's atheistic roots in the "masters of suspicion" (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) contemporary cultural theory has been adapted by scholars not only to successfully dispute the atheistic presuppositions of modern secular thinking in the social sciences, thereby revitalizing religious and theological reflection in the Christian and Judaic traditions, but, more surprisingly perhaps, it has legitimized the use of phenomena from these particular traditions as resources for critical thinking about religion per se.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-2538-8_10

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