Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2001

Abstract

Our experience, supported we think by that of others, is that it is most difficult to do this well, whether we are trying to talk about religion within a discipline, such as law or psychology or anthropology, or even in more informal ways, with our friends and colleagues. There are many reasons for this: It is in the nature of religious experience to be ineffable or mysterious, at least for some people or in some religions; different religions imagine the world and its human inhabitants, and their histories, in ways that are enormously different; and there is no superlanguage into which all religions can be translated, for purposed of understanding, comparison, or mutual intelligibility. This point can be put even more strongly: The deepest truths and commitments of one religion, its fundamental narratives, are likely to appear simply irrational, or even weird, to those who belong to another religious tradition, or who are themselves without religion; this means that the attempt to study and talk about a religion (other than one’s own) is likely to have a built-in element of patronization, at least when one is studying beliefs one could not imagine oneself sharing.

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