Revised: Comparative Religious Traditions*An early draft version of Professor Peter Ochs's essay was published in the 74:1 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR). This is the correct, revised version. The JAAR regrets the error.
Author: Ochs, Peter
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 74, Number 2, June 2006 , pp. 483-494(12)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
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Abstract:
Debates about “religious studies vs. theology” may be irresolvable because they are symptoms of a crisis of a different order: the academy's still-colonialist relation to our civilization(s)' folk-or-wisdom traditions, “religious” traditions in particular. Scholars of religious studies or theology practice a kind of “colonialism writ-small” when they remove their subject matter from its lived, societal contexts and re-situate it in conceptual worlds of their own devising. If endless debates follow, they concern these worlds we have constructed rather than the religions and theologies that we study.Document Type: Research article
DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfj056
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