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22 responses to “How can we make the subject matter of philosophy of religion more diverse?”

1. 

   C

   October 20, 2014

   Very nice post, Helen. I thought I’d just add that there’s a further obstacle to diversity in the field. I’ve submitted two papers that could be considered connected to the philosophy of religion over the past five or six years. (One dealt with issues on the border of phil religion and mind that dealt with some work of Swinburne’s and one dealt with a problem for free will defenses posed by a certain kind of evil.) I found the referee reports to be far more hostile and dismissive than I expected and than I’ve experienced with other work. Even if it wasn’t as good as other work I submitted, I found the level of hostility rather striking. I’ve spoken with some agnostics and atheists who continue to work in this area more often than I do and a few have reported similar experiences. Since it’s not my main area of interest, I don’t see any reason to keep trying. While I have very limited anecdotal evidence to work from, I have spoken to people who fear that they will face an unfair burden in refereeing because they don’t defend views accepted by the dominant force in the discipline.

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2. 

   Here is a Name

   October 20, 2014

   It seems likely to be a mistake to assume that all religions everywhere have something to offer philosophers, but this posts comes close to assuming as much. Many do, many don’t.

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3. 

   Carl Mosser

   October 20, 2014

   I agree about the need to address alternate theisms and religions. Interesting that you mention Mormonism as your example. I know of one or two articles on Mormonism in each of the three journals you mentioned. Its not much, but something. Some very nice essays have been published in Element, the journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. Most are written by believing Mormons, but there are a few by non-Mormons like me and Steven T. Davis. Element is an attractive journal. Unfortunately, few libraries receive it and most articles are available online only to SMPT members. The real challenge, I’ve found, is convincing people that one can do philosophically interesting, rigorous, academic work on something like Mormonism. Most people find that inconceivable. I’ve even been advised to omit books and articles on Mormonism from my CV because they will hurt my career.

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4. 

   p

   October 20, 2014

   I do not know much about the current state of philosophy of religion but it seems to me that you are reducing even current or recent philosophy way too much (if nothing else there is a lot of philosophy of religion in the judaistic tradition). But it might be worth considering that philosophical reflection of religion even in the West pre-dates Christianity and that Christian theism (in its several varieties) is a Christian version of theism that was interesting to and developed by first pagan later also Christian philosophers in something like a critical reaction to many different religious systems (from Egyptian and Babylonian religions, through Zoroastrism, to Greek and Roman various polytheistic religions) which they thought were often popular myths and prejudices guilty of various blunders (this begins, of course, with Xenophanes). I am not sure what this means, but there is a certain divide between the religion of philosophers (or the kind of religion and divine being philosophers think about) and popular religion.

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5. 

   Helen De Cruz

   October 21, 2014

   I am not denying that there is a lot of interesting philosophical theology, and that a lot of this predates Christianity. I am thinking of all the work in Muslim philosophical theology by people like Avicenna, Al-Ghazali etc. But if you open the leading journals in philosophy of religion I mentioned above, the books in philosophy of religion published by university presses, etc., then you will find very little engagement with this work. These ideas are no longer developed or seriously considered, a few exceptions not withstanding. I am arguing that precisely because we have such a rich tradition, it should be possible for contemporary philosophers of religion to broaden their scope.

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6. 

   Helen De Cruz

   October 21, 2014

   I did not argue this, but I am arguing for openness and intellectual humility. If we don’t at least engage with these different traditions, we will never know.

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7. 

   Carl Mosser

   October 21, 2014

   Appreciate the post and agree with your basic point. As someone who publishes on Mormonism, I was glad to see it as your illustration. Your characterization of the academic study of Mormonism is a bit off, though. Mormon Studies has always been, and continues to be, dominated by history. Sociology comes in distant second. How the movement became successful in America is not the driving question, even among sociologists (who are more interested in international Mormonism and other kinds of sociological questions). With regard to Phil Religion, one or two articles on Mormonism have been published in each of the journals you list. The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology (SMPT) publishes the journal Element. A number of fine essays have appeared there. Most of the contributors are believing Mormons seeking to better understand their faith, but a few come from non-Mormons like me, Paul Owen, and Steven T. Davis. One can also find philosophical treatments of Mormonism in books like Beckwith and Parrish’s The Mormon Concept of God, The New Mormon Challenge (ed. Beckwith, Mosser, Owen), Mormonism at the Crossroads of Philosophy and Theology (ed. Baker), Blake Ostler’s multivolume Exploring Mormon Thought, and a couple of the essays in The Mormon World (ed. Mosser and Sherlock, forthcoming). While this doesn’t constitute a flood of material, its something. The biggest challenge publishing on Mormon theology–and I suspect for some other religions you have in mind–is that people find it weird. People simply find it inconceivable that there could be anything philosophically interesting about Mormon teaching to merit serious academic investigation. I’ve even been been told that publishing on Mormonism will hurt my career and “If you’re going to do it, then, for God’s sake, leave it off your CV!” Many who might be inclined to publish on Mormonism or any of the other religious movements in view may be reticent to do so since those publications may not be weighed very heavily in tenure and promotion, and may even have a detrimental effect.

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8. 

   Zach

   October 21, 2014

   Thank you for this post, Helen. The narrow focus on Christianity and even provincial arguments within Christianity, such as the proofs (although I know that they were relevant in both Jewish and Muslim theology) and the problem of evil, have restricted contemporary philosophy of religion such that it is often thought of as Christian philosophy of religion.
   This has led to PoR’s continued marginalization in both philosophy and religious studies, where it is not seen as offering fresh insights into cross-cultural religious phenomena. And thus a professional consequence is that many interested in PoR (like myself) end up doing work in religious studies programs which are more congenial to cross-cultural approaches, hybrid methods, and the use of Continental theory.
   More importantly, though, it means we miss out on what we do know about religion from a cross-cultural and diachronic perspective. Most philosophies of religion (I know there are exceptions) don’t deal with the now significant literature on ritual, the cognitive bases of religion, contemporary evolutionary psychological approaches to religion, religious violence, or, heck, even the amazing ideas found in other religions/philosophies, particularly those of Indigenous and non-Western traditions. I would argue that conversation with these ideas would deepen and significantly broaden the ways in which we approach philosophy of religion.
   I would disagree, though, that philosophy is still best equipped to deal with these ideas. There are anthropologists, sociologists, religious historians, etc., that have a deep working knowledge of theory and practice, and employ these to tremendous effect (I’m thinking of people like Catherine Bell or Scott Atran). Philosophers need to listen to people like this with humility, because, to a large extent, they know more about the object of our inquiry than we do. We can then use our specialized tools to make observations and generalities regarding this data, but our role is that of a synoptician and specialist and co-worker.

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9. 

   Matt

   October 21, 2014

   The biggest challenge publishing on Mormon theology–and I suspect for some other religions you have in mind–is that people find it weird.
   Also, some of it is, or is supposed to be, esoteric, in that only the properly initiated and faithful are supposed to be told it, and they are not supposed to reveal it to those outside the faith. Of course, you can find an awful lot of it out if you want, but then, this is often publicly denied by Mormons. This makes it hard to get a very honest and clear discussion of the issues.

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10. 

    Helen De Cruz

    October 21, 2014

    Hi Carl, Thanks for your comments. And you are right about the importance of history – I think my view was somewhat skewed by the sociology work I read about Mormonism by Rodney Stark. I remember seeing one paper on Mormonism a while ago in one of the philosophy of religion journal (I didn’t know there were two perhaps!), but given the demographics of Mormonism, one would expect a higher percentage of papers engaging with Mormon theology than just one or two out of hundreds of articles I’ve seen.
    The weirdness is surely a contributing factor. One of the things that started my recent interest in Mormonism was a special evening on the topic at my college, Somerville, where a Mormon speaker (missionary and elder) talked about Mormon theology and the choir sang Mormon songs. Somerville is nondenominational and we often have speakers of other faiths (including the British Humanists) and my first sense was one of alienation – I thought the multi-tier heaven, the embodied gods, the extreme theosis were very strange. It’s a pity that weirdness would count prima facie against the topic as a potential academic field (but you are probably right).

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11. 

    Helen De Cruz

    October 21, 2014

    Hi Matt: I have talked to Mormon elders for several hours, inviting them to my house after they moved to the area, and talking about their religion, and I suspected perhaps they want to play down the specificity of their religious beliefs so as not to alienate potential converts (Christians). When I asked them if they thought Jesus was God, they didn’t want to give a straight answer.

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12. 

    Carl Mosser

    October 21, 2014

    Matt, Mormonism’s key metaphysical and epistemological claims are readily found in exoteric sources, not the esoteric Temple ceremonies. The key primary material relevant to philosophy of religion is found in the Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, official declarations of the First Presidency, Joseph Smith’s sermons (esp. the King Follett Discourse), and the writings of such LDS leaders as Orson Pratt, B.H. Roberts, John Widtsoe, and James Talmage. The relevant texts and issues are openly discussed by Mormon philosophers. The Temple rites are a primary source of LDS theology, but the basic themes are described in LDS publications and nothing in them significantly alters the distinctive LDS metaphysical framework readily assembled from other sources. I have never found it difficult to find honest LDS interlocutors interested in clear discussion of the issues.

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13. 

    try102030

    October 22, 2014

    I have never read or heard any plausible explanation of what the difference is between a religion and a myth other than the unsatsifactory, ‘people don’t believe myths anymore’. On this account it seems religions then are just stories in myth’s waiting room.
    So I’d be interested to see work done in collaboration with those who study literature and myth outside philosophy departments, on pinning down why we commonly refer to say, ‘Greek myth’ and ‘Christian religion’ and not the other way around, or both as myth or both as religion.
    Given the fact some people still practice e.g. ancient Greek religion, this question I think comes to bear on the extent to which supposedly-ethical beliefs should (not) get special privelege under law just because they are presumed to be religious – if no one can say what that label adds, other than to not need to evidence you actually hold that ethico-religious belief (or that it is any good).
    This ought to engage anyone at all who as beliefs they take to be ethical and wants them respected under law. A prime example of the top of my head: halal slaughtering in a country where other methods of slaughter must meet minimum standards of animal cruelty and identical halal methods would not be permitted if they were not considered religious.

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14. 

    Matt

    October 22, 2014

    I grew up in the Mormon church (some of my family members are still active members, in leadership, even) so I know that stuff, Carl. I’ve read the books you mention (and more!) in their tedious detail. But it’s not true that believers think that the publicly available stuff you mention is all that’s important. And, it’s not true that they stuff that missionaries will tell people like Helen is all there is. To them, the esoteric stuff is of great importance. And, it’s not supposed to be revealed to people who don’t have a temple recommend. (revealing it can be grounds for being excommunicated.) If you’re going to take Mormonism seriously, it requires taking the esoteric nature of parts of it seriously, too.

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15. 

    p

    October 22, 2014

    There is no precise answer other than historical. However, one idea is that the Greek philosophers started to provide arguments both for the existence of god and for a certain conception of god. God in this sense became something like a theoretical entity that had explanatory power and insofar as it was such it admitted of refutations, modifications, and so on. Myths were not of this sort – although they did provide explanation of events, they were not constructed through arguments nor were they revisable in the light of arguments. I am, of course, drawing a too shard divide, but I think this is the core of the difference. Of course, it all gets inter-mingled as history goes on, but it is important that Christian theology is a product of antiquity (albeit of late antiquity) that came to be from several different sources, one of which was Greek (mainly (neo-)Platonic, but later on also Aristotelian) philosophy. A bit different account – but perhaps better and in the voice of somebody who was right there is offered by Cicero who distinguishes, sharply, between religio and superstitio…

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16. 

    Carl Mosser

    October 22, 2014

    Matt, I did not say anything to suggest esoteric teachings and practices are unimportant to Latter-day Saints. Neither did I suggest non-LDS scholars of Mormonism shouldn’t take Mormonism’s esoteric aspects seriously. I didn’t even mention missionaries. So, your last comment is quite beside the point at hand. My claim, relevant to Helen’s post, was simply this: “Mormonism’s key metaphysical and epistemological claims are readily found in exoteric sources, not the esoteric Temple ceremonies.” In other words, the sorts of truth claims that typically interest philosophers of religion qua philosophers of religion are available in publicly accessible sources. If you can identify important metaphysical or epistemological claims that are found only in the Temple ceremonies, then please enlighten me.

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17. 

    Alan White

    October 22, 2014

    Inclusiveness of inquiry in any area runs risks of inadvertently legitimizing marginally respectable ideology. In aesthetics it may be studies of counterfeit art that gives an air of intellectual legitimacy to what is just at bottom imitation for pragmatically purely selfish profit. A religious parallel of an ill-constrained study of a certain popular and powerful movement fronted by movie stars and founded by a sci-fi writer comes to mind. Just as philosophy of science should constrain study to methods and topics that plausibly yield considerations of understanding the universe as opposed to popular (and usually) profitable self-interested forms of pseudoscience, maybe philosophy of religion should try to identify what filters through sociologically popular appearances of religion to give us serious questions of the reality of God(s). I propose to relegate questions of the goals of religions as practiced to sociology and the concepts that the religions operate on as a matter of philosophy of religion. So the esoteric practices of Mormonism or Scientology are sociological. What are their concepts of God(s) and their relation to human experience? If these have clear conceptual maps, then that is fodder for philosophy of religion. But if there is pseudoscience, there might be pseudoreligion, and though part of the task of philosophy of religion might be identifying the latter, as it is for philosophy of science for the former, it is not the main task for either form of philosophy.

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18. 

    patrick

    October 23, 2014

    It is hard for me to be concerned about the lack of diversity of the “content” of philosophy of religion when there is such a statistically glaring lack of diversity in the contributors of that content. It is, overwhelmingly, white males, and that needs to change–and maybe then we will get diversity in content, for free as it were? One thing we can do to encourage the right kind of diversity, then, is by paying attention to the types of people we let into the debates–such as, shameless plug, by supporting the gendered conference campaign! shameless plug

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19. 

    Helen De Cruz

    October 24, 2014

    Hi Alan: I like your analogy of pseudoscience/pseudoreligion, but I am not sanguine we can, without due consideration of the contents of these beliefs, decide in advance which beliefs are worth studying and which aren’t. The reason that few educated westerners aren’t polytheists, for instance, is not because polytheism is incoherent (although it might well turn out to be), but because most of us were raised in a monotheist environment. One is tempted to say, after the fact, that only monotheism and scientific naturalism are plausible options, and give reasons for this, but that doesn’t mean polytheism isn’t a worthy object of study (in an alternate history where pagan religions weren’t eradicated by Christianity, I could well envisage intelligent people discussing polytheism in diverse forms in the mainstream philosophy of religion journals). Without investigation, we will never know.
    As to your specific examples, the emergence of Mormonism (with Joseph Smith’s prophecy) seems in line with that of other religions, organic, influenced by other religious traditions (see the book The Refiner’s Fire on the influences of Kabbalism and Christianity), whereas the invention of Scientology is much more top-down (an “invented religion” in Carole Cusack’s terms). I don’t know what conclusions to draw for this for their epistemic status, but it a fun topic for an epistemology of religion paper.

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20. 

    Helen De Cruz

    October 24, 2014

    Hi Patrick: I agree the GCC is a great thing, and diversity within philosophy of religion (in its practitioners) is low. Kevin Timpe crunched some numbers, suggesting that women might be even less represented in PoR than in other fields, across different samples, he has about 10% women in PoR (or even less), whereas the percentage across philosophy in general is about 20% for faculty members. Still, addressing just the demographics (a laudable aim and something I support 100%) only addresses part of the problem. In fact, the problem will only be seriously addressed if there is also an openness to diversity in subject matters, for instance, feminist analytic theology, work on female mystics, etc, is still fringe within philosophy of religion. So while increasing diversity of practitioners is a good thing, we should also be more open to other approaches, otherwise, as Park said, our increased diversity is just cosmetic, and we might not be able to retain people who aren’t white males.

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21. 

    Alan White

    October 24, 2014

    Helen, one thing I admire about you is your uncanny ability to extract the maximum of content of a post that was quickly and minimally constructed in the first place!
    When I teach PHI/REL (I am this semester) I start with a historical overview emphasizing the theme “religion evolves”. Christianity as Messianic cult emerging from Judaism, splitting into many Eastern and Western versions, then shocked by mutation of Luther’s individualism versus Catholicism’s institutionalism which eventually leads to the restorationist Mary Baker Eddys and Joseph Smiths, with the latter specifically advancing the emergence of a Newer Testament on top of the New Testament that the early Christians lumped onto the Torah. At least the products of such evolution are contextually recognizable as each such presents a new religion mutating from a kind of parentage. Maybe what I see as legitimacy starts there. But pragmatically I emphasize to my students two necessary conditions for a religion’s survival: a sufficient social/biologic genetic pool of adherents (why the Shakers were doomed no matter how large the initial pool!), and resources to sustain the movement (money mostly in the modern era). Those conditions allow for “creationist” startups that are outside the continuing evolutionary trends. Scientology I’d think is one such example. With a context of evolutionary-historical trends as legitimizing religion in some sociological sense, I wonder if movements outside that context might stand scrutiny for the label “pseudoreligion”. One suggestion.
    Again, you make me think! Thanks so much.

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22. 

    Patrick S. O’Donnell

    November 11, 2014

    “Do western philosophers eschew non-western philosophical views because they think they are inferior, lacking in rigor? Or is it mainly a matter of ignorance?”
    I’d say both reasons are applicable, separately and in combination (e.g., the belief in inferiority or lack of rigor is one forged in deep ignorance).
    And there’s more than a little irony involved in the case of Indian philosophy, as the late Michael Dummett made clear in a talk he gave in 1992 at the commemoration held on the first anniversary of the death of Professor B.K. Matilal at All Souls College, Oxford. Dummett rightly points out that “the Indian religions, at any rate–Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism–are, in their essence as religions closer to philosophy than the Western religions, which I take to be Judaism, and its successors, Christianity and Islam. If you look at the Old Testament [TANAKH, or the Hebrew Bible], the New Testament, and the Koran, you will find in them very little, if anything[!], that could be called philosophical writing or in any philosophical style,…whereas in the Indian scriptures there is much that is of a philosophical character or touches very directly upon a philosophical style of thought.” Matilal of course was a trailblazer when it came to the employment of “analytic” skills to Indic philosophy of religion, needing to overcome in the endeavor, as Heeraman Tiwari says, not only the ignorance of Western philosophers, but the “prejudice of Western Indologists and Orientalists.”
    The quote from Dummett is found in Tiwari’s introduction to Bimal Krishna Matilal’s Logical and Ethical Issues: An Essay on Indian Philosophy of Religion (New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2004; first published under a slightly different title in 1982 by the University of Calcutta).

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