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ship. One can compare what a pilgrimage means to different people at one time and place, or one can comparethat pilgrimage with all others within the same religion,or one can smdy pilgrimage as a theme that is manifest in all times and religions. Although this particular

book makes a point of focusing on transculmral religiousforms of the broadest generic scope, many "types" of religious expression-such as saviors, priests, or temples-are not found universally but within certain regions,periods, or types of religion. Much specific comparativework is best limited to smdies of variations Within asingle religious culmre or cluster of culmres. Each kindof phenomenon researched will have its own justifiablescope of comparative data and analysis.

4. Where comparative analysis deals with similarity,it deals with analogy rather than with identity, in whichthings, otherwise unlike, are similar in some respects. Itis not just a matter of identifying what is "the same"everywhere. The significance of the analogies or parallelsis a matter of judgment.

S. Comparative work is not only a process of establishing similarities or analogies. It is also the fundamental instrument for discerning differences. The pointneeds stressing because this double function has notbeen fully appreciated. Many people fear that comparative approaches lose sight of the richness of cultural diversity. But the smdy of continuity (or parallels) and thesmdy of individuality cannot be separated. Only by seeing what is common between things can one see what isdifferent or innovative about anyone of them. A Christian or Jewish theology cannot fully understand its ownuniqueness and its nuances, without knowing which ofits features belong to religion in general and which aredistinctively its own.

6. Finally, comparison is not an end in itself. It yieldscomparative perspective, the process by which overarch~

ing themes on the one hand and historical particularson the other get enriched by the way they illumine eachother. Eecause it is the central purpose of this book toillustrate this larger process, let us consider it a little further here.

There is a creative interplay between theme and example that enriches understanding of both. The variations develop, reveal, "work" the theme, as does a set ofmusical variations. Or, shifting the analogy, the speciesadd to our understanding of the genus, just as the genuscalls attention to common patterns present in a species.Many different creatures-such as fish, birds, mammals-amplify the theme "vertebrate." Dolphins, giraffes,armadillos and humans are interestingly different ver

Explaining Religion 3 1

of any subject: bicycles and jets show what transportation can be, pianos and flutes demonstrate what musicalinstruments can be, Gandhi and Napoleon embody whatleadership can be.

It is exactly the same with religious forms. Our un

derstanding ofwhat religious language and practice "canbe" is diminished if we do not have the most completeawareness of its possible variations. By looking at all thegods in religious history, we see more fully what a godis. The variations make the theme stronger and moreinteresting. By seeing all the different things observedin various rites, we see more fully what rimal can be.

The Kaaba, the Muslim shrine at Mecca, the symbolic connecting point of heaven and earth for theIslamic world, is more fully comprehensible ifwe are familiar with the generic theme of "world centers." Without a sense of that theme and its prevalence, the Kaabasymbolism might be viewed merely as an odd or unintelligible belief. By the same token, the profound centering role of the Kaaba in the lives ofMuslims providesan extraordinary living illustration and amplification ofthe world ceu'ter motif.

The comparative process does not prejudge religiousphenomena, as though they are there to be pinned andtagged like helpless specimens that must be made to conform by all means to our favorite taxonomies. Rather,religious expressions are facts-often living and articulate-that can continually instruct and illuminate ourcategories. In these ways, comparative perspective is alarger educational and interpretive process than '-;mysimple, straightforward act of describing or comparingdifferent religions ....

3.2 EXPLAINING RELIGION

Wayne Proudfoot teaches religious studies at Columbia University. He is- particularly interested inthe psychology and philosophy of religion and hasmade important contributions to methodology. Inthe selection that follows, he considers the problems of reductionism and explanation, using someaccounts of religious experiences as his primary examples. He argues that it is important to distinguishbetween descriptive and explanatory reduction. Thefirst is inappropriate, but the second is both ap-.propriate and essential for the student of religions.Note the ways in which the hermeneutical principleof context informs his readings of these accountsand the way he sees interaction between theory and

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32 Chapter 3/ How Should We Study Religion?

WAYNE PROUDFOOT

Explanation

READING QUESTIONS

1. As you read, make a list of all the words and ideasyou do not understand or are uncertain about. Discuss them with a classmate,look them up in a dictionary, or bring them up in classfor discussionandclarification.

2. According to Proudfoot's account of Mircea Eliade's views,what does Ellade think is wrong withreductionism?

3. What is first-person privilege, and how does itdiffer from the explanation offered by the analyst?

4. What is the differencebetween "descriptive reduction" and "explanatoryreduction," and why is thisdistinction important?

Reductionism has become a derogatory epithet in the history and philosophy of religion. Scholars whose work isin other respects quite diverse have concurred in advocating approaches to the study of religion which are oriented around campaigns against reductionism. Thesecampaigns are often linked to a defense of the autonomy

of the study of religion. The distinctive subject matterof that study, it is argued, requires a distinctive method.In particular, religious experience cannot properly bestudied by a method that reduces it to a cluster of phenomena that can be explained in historical, psychological, or sociological terms. Although it is difficult toestablish exactly what is meant by the term, the label"reductionist" is deemed sufficient to warrant dismissal

of any account of religious phenomena.Questions have been raised about this wholesale re

ection of reductive accounts and about the theologicalmotivations Ihat sometimes underlie it, but the issues inthe discussion have not been sufficiently clarified. Penher and Yonan ... , for example, take the problem to becrucial for the study of religion, survey the meaning ofreduction in empiricist philosophy of science, and deplore the negative connotations that have been attachedto the term. But they admit that they have found theissue difficult. They show no appreciation ofwhy the at-

From WayneProudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1985).Excerpts from chapter 5.Copyright 1985byThe Regentsof the Universityof California.Used bypermission.Referencesdeleted.

tack on reductionism has such an appeal, and thus theyare unable to elucidate the discussion. The warningsagainst reductionism derive from a genUine insight, butthat insight is often misconstrued to serve an apologeticpurpose. I shall try to clarify the confusion surroundingthe term reduction as it is applied to accounts of religiousexperience and to distinguish between the insight and

misapplications that result in protective strategies. A recent essay in the philosophy of religion devoted to theexposure and critique of reductionism will serve to illustrate those misapplications and strategies.

THE PROBLEM

One ofthe most influential critics ofreductionism in the

study of religion has been Mircea Eliade. He has arguedthat the task of the historian of religion is a distinctiveone and has contrasted it with what he takes to be the reductionist methods of the social sciences.... Accordingto Eliade, a historical or sociological approach fails tograsp the meaning of religious phenomena. Like the literary critic interpreting a text, the historian of religionmust attempt to understand religious data "on their ownplane of reference." He or she should adopt a hermeneutic method. Just as literary works cannot be reducedto their origins, religious phenomena ought not to bereduced tci their social, psychological, or historical ori

gins or functions. Eliade ... contends that "a religiousdatum reveals its deeper meaning when it is consideredon its plane of reference, and not when it is reduced toone of its secondary aspects or its contexts." He citesDurkheim and Freud as examples of those who haveadopted reductionist methods for the study of religion.

Two points are worthy of note: (1) Eliade thinksthat wh;t is lost by reductive approaches is the meaningofreligious phenomena. He praises van der Leeuw for respecting the peculiar intentionality ofreligious data andthus the irreducibility of religious representations ... j

(2) his examples of reductionist approaches are drawnalmost exclusively from history and the social sciences.Theories that purport to account for religious phenomenain terms of their origins or the functions they servein a particular social context are ipsofacto reductionist.

Eliade holds further that religious data represent theexpression of religious experiences. Religion is "first of .all, an experience sui generis, incited by man's encounterwith the sacred .... " In order to understand religiousdata on their own plane of reference, the scholar must' ''relive' a multitude of existential-situations .... " Onlythrough such a procedure can the meaning of the data begrasped. To reduce those data to their origins or socialfunction"sis to fail to understand them as expressions of

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religious experience. That understanding can come onlyfrom acquaintance. Since Eliade regards religious experience as experience of the sacred, he can summarize hisantireductionist position by reference to "the irreducibility of the sacred."

Religious experience is the experience of something.It is intentional in that it cannot be described without

reference to a grammatical object. Just as fear is alwaysfear of something, and a perceptual act can only be described by reference to its object, a religious experiencemust be identified under a certain description, and thatdescription must include a reference to the object of theexperience. Eliade employs the term sacred to characterize the object of all religious experience. The notorious obscurity of that term need not concern us here,nor need we accept the suggestion that all religious experiences have the same object. The point is that whenEliade refers to the irreducibility of the sacred, he is

claiming that it is the intentional object of the religious experience which must not be reduced. To do sois to lose the experience, or to attend to something elsealtogether.

This point is well taken . . If someone is afraid of abear, his fear cannot be accurately described withoutmentioning the bear. This remains true regardless ofwhether or not the bear actually exists outside his mind.He may mistakenly perceive a fallen tree trunk on thetrail ahead of him as a bear, but his fear is properly described as fear of a bear. To describe it as fear of a log

would be to misidentify his emotion and reduce it tosomething other than it is. In identifying the experience,emotion, or practice of another, i must restrict myselfto concepts and beliefs that have informed his experience. I cannot ascribe to him concepts he would not rec~ognize or beliefs he would not acknowledge. Thoughhistorical evidence might turn up to show that Socrateswas dying of cancer, no evidence could show that he wasafraid of dying of cancer. No such fear could be ascribedto him because he didn't possess the concept of cancerwhich is presupposed by that emotion.

Consider two examples cited byWilliam James. Thefirst is an experience reported by Stephen Bradley....

I thought I saw the Saviour, by faith, in humanshape, for about one second in the room, witharms extended, appearing to say to me, Come. Thenext day I rejoiced with trembling; soon after myhappiness was so great that I said that I wanted todie; this world had no place in my affections, asI knew of, and every day appeared to me as theSabbath. I had an ardent desire that all mankindmight feel as I did; I wanted to have them all loveGod supremely ....

Proudfoot Explanation

The second is from Mrs. Jonathan Edwards.

Part of the night I lay awake, sometimes asleep, andsometimes between sleeping and waking. But allnight I continued in a constant, clear, and livelysense of the heavenly sweetness of Christ's excellentlove, of his nearness to me, and of my dearness to

him. I seemed to myself to perceive a glow of divinelove come down from the heart of Christ in heaveninto my heart in a constant stream, like a stream orpencil of sweet light. At the same time my heart andsoul all flowed out in love to Christ, so that thereseemed to be a constant flowing and reflowing ofheavenly love, and I appeared to myself to float orswim, in these bright, sweet beams, like the motesswimming in the beams of the sun, or the streamsof his light which come in at the window....

Bradley tells of a vision in human shape, and Edwardsreports a lively sense of Christ's love, which seemed toglow like a stream or pencil of light. Each of these experiences can only be properly described by reference toChrist and to Christian beliefs. One might try to separate the description of the core experience from its interpretation and to argue that only the interpreta'tion isspecifically Christian. But if the references to the Savior, the Sabbath, and God are eliminated from Bradley'sreport, we are left with something other than his experience. After deleting references to Christian concepts,we have a vision of a human shape with arms extended

saying, "Come." Is this any less informed by Christianbeliefs and doctrines than was the original experience?Surely the vision of a person with outstretched arms isnot some universal archetype onto which Bradley hasadded an interpretation in Christian terms. Nor can hisexperience of comfort and salvation be abstracted fromhis Christian beliefs. Sarah Edwards's experience is nota vision, but it would be inaccurate to describe it exclu

sively in general terms and to characterize it only as alively sense of sweetness, accompanied by the sensation of floating in streams of bright light. Her report

cannot be purged of references to Christ and Christianbeliefs and still remain an accurate description of theexpenence.

An emotion, practice, or experience must be described in terms that can plausibly be attributed to thesubject on the basis of the available evidence. The subject's self-ascription is normative for describing the experience. This is a kind of first-person privilege that hasnothing at all to do with immediate intuitive access tomental states versus mediated inferential reasoning. It isstrictly a matter of intentionality. It is like the distinction between the words of a speaker and those of onewho reports what he says. The speaker's meaning, and

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34 Chapter 3 / How Should We Study Religion?

his choice of words to express that meaning, are normative for the reporter. The latter may choose to paraphrase or elaborate, but the words uttered by the speakerare authoritative for determining the message. Wheret is the subject's experience which is the object of study,hat experience must be identified under a descriptionhat can plausibly be attributed to him. In the cases cited

above, the subject's own words constitute the descripion. If, however, an observer or analyst describes the experience of another, he must formulate it in terms thatwould be familiar to,incorporating beliefs that would beacknowledged by, the subject. If challenged, he must ofer reasons in support ofhis ascription of those conceptsand beliefs to the subject. He is not responsible for reaons offered in support of those beliefs.The explanation the analyst offers of that same ex

perience is another matter altogether. It need not becouched interms familiar or acceptable to the subject.t must be an explanation of the experience as identiied under the subject's description, but the subject's approval of the explanation is not required. Bradley's experience might be explained in terms of the conflicts ofearly adolescence and that of Sarah Edwards as a consequence ofher lifewith Mr. Edwards. No reference needbe made to God or Christ in the construction of theseexplanations. If the explanation is challenged, the onewho proposed it i;~responsible for providing reasons toupport it and fonhowing how it accounts for the evidence better than any of its rivals does....

In the study of religion, 'considerable confusion hasesulted from the failure to distinguish the requisite conditions for the identification of an experience under acertain description from those for explaining the expeience. The analyst must cite, but need not endorse, theconcepts, beliefs, and judgments that enter into the subect's identification of his experience. He must be prepared to give reasons for his ascription of those beliefsand judgments to the subject, but he need not defendhe beliefs and judgments themselves. Ifhe proposes anexplanatory hypothesis to account for the experience"he need not restrict himself to the subject's concepts and

beliefs, but he must be prepared to give reasons in support of his explanation.

DESCRIPTIVE ANDEXPLANATORY REDUCTION

We are now in a position to distinguish two differentkinds of reduction. Descriptive reduction is the failure todentify an emotion, practice, or experience under thedescription by which the subject identifies it. This isndeed unacceptable. To describe an experience in non-

religious terms wh~n the subject himself describes itin religious terms is to misidentify the experience, orto attend to another experience altogether. To describeBradley's experience assimply a vision of a human shape,and that of Mrs. Edwards as a lively warm sense thatseemed to glow like a pencil of light, is to lose the identifying characteristics of those experiences. To describe

the experience of a mystic by reference only to alphawaves, altered heart rate, and changes in bodily temperature is to misdescribe it. To characterize the experienceof a Hindu mystic in terms drawn from the Christiantradition is to misidentify it. In each of these instances,the subject's identifying experience has been reduced tosomething other than that experienced by the subject.This might properly be called reductionism. In any case,it precludes an accurate identification of the subject'sexpenence.

Explanatory reduction consists in offering an explanation of an experience in terms that are not those of thesubject and that might not meet with his approval. Thisis perfecdy justifiable and is, in fact, normal procedure.The explanandum is set in' a new context, whether thatbe one of covering laws and initial conditions, narrative.structure, or some other explanatory model. The termsof the explanation need not be familiar or acceptable tothe subject. Historians offer explanations of past eventsby employing such concepts as socialization, ideology,means of production, and feudal economy. Seldom canthese concepts properly be ascribed to the people whosebehavior is the object of the historian's study. But thatposes no problem. The explanation stands or falls according to how well it can account for all the availableevidence.

Failure to distinguish between these two kinds of reduction leads to the claim that any account of religiousemotions, practices, or experience must be restrictedto the perspective of the subject and must employ onlyterms, beliefs, and judgments that would meet with hisapproval. This claim derives its plausibility from examples of descriptive reduction but is then extended topreclude explanatory reduction. When so extended, it

becomes a protective strategy. The subject's identifyingdescription becomes normative for purposes of explanation, and inquiry is blocked to insure that the subject'sown explanation of his experience is not contested. Onthis. view, to entertain naturalistic explanations of theexperiences of Bradley and Edwards is reductionist be'cause these explanations conflict with the convictions ofthe subjects that their experiences were the result of divine activity in their lives.

Many of the warnings against reductionism in thestudy of religion conflate descriptive and explanatoryreduction. Eliade exhorts the historian of religion to

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36 Chapter 3 / How Should We Study Religion?

cussing different ways of studying religions rangingfrom anthropological to theological approaches.

Penner, Hans H. "The Study of Religion." In TheHarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, edited byJonathan Z. Smith and William Scott Green, pp. 909917. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. A clear andconcise account of the nature of theory and basic

approaches (sociological, phenomenological, psychological) historical, etc.) to the study of religionalong with a critical discussion of functional theories and other types of theories.

Sharpe, Eric]. "Methodological Issues." In The Ency-clopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, vol. 14,pp. 83-88. New York: Macmillan, 1987. A discussion of different methodological issues such asvalue judgments, vocabulary translation, insider'sand outsider's perspectives, and the like.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

1. Create a debate either in class between groups ofstudents or in writing in which you present a position paper in favor of or against reductionism inthe study of religions. If you write it, present abrief position paper on both sides of the issue.

2. Look at William James's Varieties of Religious Expe-rience: A Study in Human Nature and select one ofthe first-person accounts of religious experiencethat James records. Describe the experience andthen interpret it by applying the hermeneuticaltools described in this chapter. (James's Varietiesis available in many different editions but was firstpublished in 1902 byLongmans, Green of NewYork.)