Response

2015, Vol. 3(3) 297–302

Theses on the critique ! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/2050303215613147
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Craig Martin
St. Thomas Aquinas College, USA

Abstract
Those of us who study the history and politics of the concept of religion and its related terms
often find that our peers in adjacent disciplines or subdisciplines do not take into account our
findings and continue to use the terms naively and unreflexively. Perhaps this is because they are
unaware of the problematic norms knotted into the history of the concept or the contested
political stakes involved in its use. Or, perhaps they are engaged in just the very sort of politics our
subdiscipline documents. When discussing this with one of the editors of CRR, he asked me to
outline why those not engaged in the historicization of the concept of religion should take our
work into account. How or why would a contemporary sociologist of religion benefit from
reading, for example, a discourse analysis of Reformation-era theologico-political rhetoric? To
that end, here I put forward the following theses on the critique of the concept of religion, making
the case, as boldly and as succinctly as I can, why our work is relevant to all who write on
‘‘religion,’’ and provide references to the essential literature on the subject for those who wish to
pursue further reading on the matter.

Keywords
Concept of religion, religion and modernity, conceptual anachronism, definition of religion

Theses
(1) The word ‘‘religion’’ and its discursive associations are often—if not always—freighted
with a great deal of normative baggage, even in apparently academic or scholarly
treatises that purport to be merely descriptive.
(2) The norms typically adhere to or are inherent in binary schemas, wherein two opposing
terms are conceived as properly or essentially distinct, either de facto or de jure: for
example, religion vs. magic; religion vs. superstition; religious experience vs. organized
religion; individual religion vs. institutional religion; outward ritual vs. inward

Corresponding author:
Craig Martin, Department of Religious Studies, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY 10976, USA.
Email: cmartin@stac.edu

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298 Critical Research on Religion 3(3)

sincerity; reasonable religion vs. fundamentalist religion; church vs. the state; religion
vs. politics; religion vs. the secular; the private sphere vs. the public sphere; religion vs.
spirituality; religious faith vs. scientific knowledge; revealed knowledge vs. empirical
knowledge; etc.
(3) One normative use of the term religion—that characterized it as solely concerning
private, inner faith or belief—was central to the modern European social imaginary
following the Protestant Reformation. Propagandists imagined an inviolable separ-
ation between ‘‘church’’ and ‘‘state,’’ each with their own proper spheres. This rhet-
orical parturition brought into being much of what the ‘‘separate spheres’’ discourse
purported merely to describe. (Of course, the hard line that was rhetorically drawn
between public and private power was in practice sometimes rendered porous—or even
nonexistent—by the fact that those forms of socialization that took place in the newly-
invented ‘‘private sphere’’ had demonstrable ‘‘public’’ effects). Sometimes this ‘‘two
kingdoms’’ ideology was used to legitimate the incipient state’s monopoly on violence,
and sometimes it was used to legitimate the newly found independence of churches
from state intervention. ‘‘Religion’’ turned out to be a flexible tool that could be put to
use by all parties for a variety of social ends. The contemporary use of the concept of
religion is today often still imbricated with the operations and ideologies of this dis-
tinctly modern mode of governmentality.1
(4) Due to its articulation within this modern social imaginary, the concept of religion is
often invoked to authorize violence. The myth that religions are endemically and
inappropriately violent is one of the means by which we authorize state violence against
what can successfully be labeled ‘‘religious’’ violence.2
(5) Because the contemporary concept of religion is native to the European modern
period and is constitutive of our modern Western social order, its application in
interpretations of other contexts—for example, ancient Rome, 19th century
Japan—is conceptually anachronistic. Conceptual anachronism is not inherently
problematic; we could rightly point to ‘‘ideologies’’ or ‘‘social hegemonies’’ in cul-
tures that did not use such terms so long as these are recognized as our technical
terms, doing our work in the analysis of others. However, in contexts where the term
was not constitutive of the social order, scholars run the risk carrying over conno-
tations that are completely alien to the context under analysis. For example, while we
could rightly speak of hegemonies in ancient Rome, it would be problematic to refer
to Marcus Aurelius as Rome’s CEO.3
(6) We often fall back on conceptual anachronism when our vocabularies are thoroughly
naturalized for us, although we would find it jarring and potentially imperialistic were
foreign vocabularies to be ahistorically applied to our own social world. We could refer
to aspects of ancient Indian culture as a religion, but what if Indians identified Euro-
Americans according to their own indigenous terms, as if all trades or vocations could
be broken down to the categories of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra? Where
do professors, plumbers, copyeditors, and movie stars fit in this categorical schema? If,
as a scholar, I am not intrinsically a ‘‘Brahmin,’’ then perhaps ancient Indians were not
intrinsically ‘‘religious.’’ Ahistorically falling back on those folk classification schemes
that have been naturalized for us is a mark of intellectual laziness.
(7) Scholars have also demonstrated that the concept of religion has been used to authorize
or legitimate some forms of culture over others within Euro-American contexts. For
instance, European colonialists used the term to distinguish those who were religious

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and cultured from those indigenous folk who lacked religion, lacked culture, and as
such were uncivilized and barbarous—and consequently, whose land and resources
could rightly be appropriated for the empire. Similarly, today we often hear the
claim ‘‘I’m spiritual but not religious,’’ a claim that is part of a discourse wherein
‘‘spirituality’’ is authentic and liberating, but ‘‘religions’’ are coercive and promote a
herd mentality. Just as ‘‘civilized’’ is today seen as a prescriptive term doing ideological
work in the analysis of other cultures, so too should we see that ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘spir-
ituality’’ often perform similar work.4
(8) Because social institutions labeled ‘‘religions’’ are awarded special legal privileges in the
United States and many other Western nations, it is a particularly contested term. In
these contexts, whoever can effectively apply the term to their own social group—or get
others to apply it to them—may be afforded privileges and protections not awarded to
other civil institutions. Institutions or cultural formations claiming to be ‘‘religious’’ in
many cases have been able to exempt themselves completely from certain laws that
apply to other, similar institutions.5 (Notably, in other contexts—such as Soviet
Russia—the identification of an institution as ‘‘religious’’ legitimized state seizure of
‘‘church’’ property.)
(9) In some social contexts, ‘‘religion’’ carries blatantly positive moral associations used to
authorize some groups as morally righteous or authentic. For instance, during the Cold
War many Americans employed a rhetorical opposition between America as a
‘‘Christian nation’’ and the ‘‘godless commies’’ in the USSR. In other social contexts,
‘‘religion’’ carries blatantly pejorative moral and epistemological associations. Popular
atheist literature today imagines ‘‘religious’’ people as backward, fundamentalist,
mythical, or credulous. In the latter cases the adjective ‘‘religious’’ serves as an insult
as much as a description.6
(10) Scholars are obligated to retire words, ideas, or concepts that carry unduly burdensome
normative baggage. Historians of early Christianity have abandoned the terms ‘‘ortho-
doxy’’ and ‘‘heresy,’’ except as first-order, socially formative identifications used by those
whom they study. Anthropologists no longer distinguish between ‘‘civilized’’ and ‘‘unciv-
ilized’’ societies, and the term ‘‘cult’’ has largely been replaced by the less normative phrase
‘‘new religious movements’’ (although the latter is not without its own problems).
(11) We could attempt to purify the concept of its ideological baggage, at least for our own
academic purposes, by offering a non-normative stipulative definition.
(12) For scholarly purposes, a non-normative stipulative definition of the term would have
to meet the following two conditions.
(a) First, ‘‘religion’’ would have to be defined strictly as a second-order, analytical term,
rather than as a rhetorical weapon used to win first-order social battles. We would
have to ask: with our definition are we engaging in a social or political field in which
we or others have something to gain or lose from our application of this contested
term? If we identify a group as ‘‘religious,’’ does our act of identification—if it is
received as authoritative in whatever social field is at stake—award the group so-
named any privileges (symbolic or real) or social capital? Does our act of identifi-
cation implicitly or explicitly carry condemnation? In sum, does it matter, socially
speaking, if we decide whether this group is religious or not? If someone stands to
win or lose on the basis of our application of the term, then we’re more likely
naturalizing our own politics than historicizing our data set—that is, we’re back
to separating the civilized from the barbarians, orthodoxy from heresy.

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(b) Second, the concept would have to demonstrate some analytical purchase. We
would have to ask: if neither praise nor penalty is incurred with the use of the
concept, does its use nevertheless add anything to our understanding of the social
formations at hand? For instance, when studying ancient Indian culture—how
appeals to the gods were used to authorize the caste system, or how an appeal to
a nonmaterial substance underlying the universe was used to reconcile arcane philo-
sophical debates—do we lose any understanding of the material if we fail to apply
the ‘‘r’’ word to the forms of culture at hand? Or, by adding the ‘‘r’’ word—by
suggesting that ‘‘religious’’ culture is somehow different from other forms of cul-
ture—do we learn anything new or gain a better understanding? If not—if the
application of the concept only mystifies our data or accomplishes a political task
for us—then the term lacks analytical usefulness.7
(13) Scholars of ‘‘religion’’ have failed to provide a definition that meets both of these
conditions, likely for a priori reasons. Until a useful definition is provided, we shouldn’t
use it except as an unsophisticated colloquialism, much as a psychologist might use the
term ‘‘crazy.’’8
(14) Without an analytically useful, non-normative concept of religion, we should reconceive
religious studies as the study of the rhetorical games and institutional politics taking place
in those forms of culture that falls under the folk taxon ‘‘religion,’’ as well as the concept of
religion itself as a site of contestation9—much as race studies today focuses not on racial
essences but rather on the social construction and performance of race. The academic
study of religion need not require the word ‘‘religion’’ to have a referent.

Acknowledgement
I am greatly indebted to Michael Altman, James Crossley, Savannah Finver, Stephanie Frank, Pat
McCullough, Russell McCutcheon, Aldea Mulhern, Nathan Rein, Matt Sheedy, Barbara Yontz, and
the editors of CRR for helpful feedback on drafts of these theses.

Notes
1. On religion as a modern, political concept, see Arnal and McCutcheon (2012); Asad (1993, 2003);
Dubuisson (2003); Fitzgerald (1999, 2007, 2011); Martin (2010); McCutcheon (2003, 2005); and
Stack et al. (2015). Other relevant literature includes McCutcheon (2015), J. Z. Smith (1982 and
2004; esp. the chapter titled ‘‘Religion, Religions, Religious’’); and W.C. Smith (1991).
2. On religion and violence, see Cavanaugh (2009), Fitzgerald (2011), and King (2007).
3. On the concept of religion in Japan see Josephson (2012); on conceptual anachronism and ‘‘reli-
gion’’ see Nongbri (2013). Nogbri’s book is probably the best introduction to these matters.
4. On normative uses of ‘‘religion’’ see Carrette and King (2005), Chidester (1996); King (1999);
Martin (2014); Masuzawa (2005), Murphy (2010); Owen (2008).
5. On ‘‘religion’’ and American law see Sullivan (2005, 2009) and Wenger (2009).
6. On the concept of ‘‘myth,’’ see Lincoln (1999).
7. See Kertzer (1989); Martin (2012); Taves (2009) for examples of scholars giving up on meeting this
condition and turning instead to other terminology or simply collapsing ‘‘religion’’ into society and
culture in general.
8. The most notable attempts at such a definition can perhaps be found in Lincoln (2006); Murphy
(2007); Riesebrodt (2010); Schilbrack (2014).
9. See Beckford (2003) on this point.

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Author biography
Craig Martin is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College. His
latest books are A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion and Capitalizing Religion:
Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie.

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