On February 17, 2020, on the Religious Studies Project podcast, editor-in-chief David G. Robertson interviewed critical religious studies scholar Timothy Fitzgerald to discuss the shortcomings of the category of religion.^[1] The two talked 20 years after Fitzgerald published his book The Ideology of Religious Studies, where he argues that “Religion cannot reasonably be taken to be a valid analytical category since it does not pick out any distinctive cross-cultural aspect of human life.”^[2] Fitzgerald ascribes the seeming universality of the category to the ideology of Western colonialism, using the religious environments of India and Japan as case studies. Although he provides valuable perspective, I have critiques of Fitzgerald’s argument; namely, he unduly ascribes all possible iterations of the category of religion to the world religions model, he fails to analyze or recognize the phenomena of religion apart from the category, and he takes differences in religious tradition to indicate evidence of a breakdown in the category itself rather than consider adapting the category.

From the beginning of the podcast, Fitzgerald ties the category of religion specifically to the world religions model (or paradigm), which he claims distorts our understanding of other religions to fit within a Protestant framework. He was troubled that Hinduism and Buddhism were treated as akin to Christianity, with a set of sacred texts and concepts. As Suzanne Owen documents in her article “The World Religions paradigm: Time for a change”, the model picks out a handful of particularly large religions as “world religions” (typically Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism), in opposition to “indigenous religions” or “new religious movements”.^[3] The world religions model was popularized in religious studies education by Ninian Smart, who formed the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education in 1969.^[3] The model has since attracted much criticism by scholars such as Jonathan Z. Smith, who shared a similar critique to Fitzgerald.^[4] Other critics include Tomoko Masuzawa, who argued the model was formed to justify West–East divisions, and Catherine Bell, who questioned why certain religions were included or excluded from the group of “world religions”.^[4]

In the United States, we can see how this world religions paradigm is deeply ingrained in our culture. In their opinion article “Religious freedom for all means sacred Indigenous sites, too”, Rev. Eric Ledermann and Rev. Andrew Black argue that we need to protect Oak Flat, held sacred by the Apaches, from destruction by copper mining. They argue, though not using this terminology, that religious protection is not just for the “world religions”. Although their intentions are to expand our conception of religion, Ledermann and Black do fall into implying that Indigenous religions gain validity by being similar to Christian tradition. They write, “As ministers rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we remind our parishioners that we must not forget that our spiritual beliefs, too, are deeply tied and rooted in the land, water and wildlife.”^[5] They even reduce the Apache’s worship to the “Creator”,^[5] not mentioning the other deities they worship,^[6] potentially because those deities are not as analogous to Christianity.

Unlike in the podcast where he doesn't dive deep into the subject, Fitzgerald also tackles in The Ideology of Religious Studies the understanding of “religion” as being marked by family resemblances, albeit reverting to strawmanning this proposition as being specifically Peter Byrne's formulation.^[7] Byrne's formulation too, as Fitzgerald points out, relies on the world religions model as a starting point.^[8] But there certainly are other formulations using family resemblances that do not rely on the world religions model, albeit perhaps with other problems. The first question I would ask Fitzgerald is: is the problem of the world religions model related to the problem of not picking out “any distinctive cross-cultural aspect of human life”? And if so, do you believe that it is possible to create a category of religion that does not rely on the world religions model?

I would argue that Fitzgerald falsely necessitates that utilizing and reifying a category of religion based in world religions leads to a distortion in understanding of all institutions or phenomena studied. Say that religion is alternatively understood as a phenomenon or a collection of phenomena utilized by certain institutions, individuals, practices, and beliefs, rather than a category that encompasses these things. Even if the category is constructed to include phenomena that are present in the world religions, utilizing the category does not necessarily lead to distortion — if it is used to understand the phenomena, rather who or what utilizes the phenomena. For example, if a model considers sacred texts to be integral to religion, it might distort our understanding of religions without canons, but it would less distort our understanding about sacred texts themselves. If we consider the idea of a sacred text to be a religious one, the model can still allow for valuable analysis of religion, despite its flaws.

Of course, this assumes that there is a phenomenon, a “distinctive cross-cultural aspect” to pick out as religious. Fitzgerald again expects too much in that he disregards a family resemblances model that contains elements only present in some religions. However, his argument has other issues. In the podcast, Fitzgerald uses his experience of teaching in Japan to argue that “our Western hegemonic classifications don't really map onto Japanese society very well”, as Robertson puts it.^[9] When Fitzgerald asked his students what religion meant to them using the dominant translation “shūkyō”, they responded that religion was Christianity, and sometimes also Buddhism.^[10] They would deny that the matsuri (festivals), their visits to shrines and temples, and paying respects to their ancestors were religious, responding that those are “Japanese customs. That's the way we live.”^[11]

Fitzgerald seems to be arguing that because Japanese people themselves don't share our notion of the category of religion, the category is invalid, which simply does not follow. The phenomena of the sacred, the supernatural, and ritual are all still present in these “customs”, and if (for the sake of argument) we consider these phenomena to be religious, we can describe the customs as religious insofar as they utilize these phenomena. A society not separating religion from the secular conceptually or in practice does not mean that the society does not contain religion. Ironically, Fitzgerald's usage of a Western Enlightenment framework distorts his understanding of Japanese religion by excluding Japanese beliefs and practices from the category on the basis that they are not separated from aspects of society that are secular in the Western world. With his unconscious Eurocentrism, he loses that categories are constructed to provide us utility; they are not things in themselves. My second question to Fitzgerald is: by “distinctive cross-cultural aspect of human life”, do you just mean a shared concept of “religious”?

Fitzgerald provides insightful commentary in the podcast regarding the distinctions between different Japanese “religions”. He says, “really, you can't talk about Shinto without talking about Confucianism and Buddhism. And the same with the others. Because they're all… they're all part of our lives. We don't really choose between them.”^[12] Taking Fitzgerald for his word (as I am unfamiliar with Japanese religion), this is an instance where our understanding of religions as institutions analogous to Christian denominations distorts how we understand Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Sticking to the category of religion as it is constructed doesn't allow us to approach these “religions” on their own terms.

This doesn't disprove the idea of religion as a category though; one could easily argue that we simply need a better formulation. A useful fleshed-out category of religion would incorporate elements from all, not some, of the institutions that share certain basic phenomena we choose to ascribe to “religion”. This would allow for minimal distortion of our understanding of these phenomena. Our categories will always to some extent be constructed in our Western paradigms if we are living in a Western society, just as Japanese categories will be constructed in Japanese paradigms. But this isn't a reason to discard the categories; rather, it gives us a reason to adapt the categories as we learn our differences and similarities. My third question to Fitzgerald is: does the label of “religious” in principle have to only apply to more structured institutions like denominations of Christianity, or could it also be applied to more amorphous institutions like Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism?

I think that Timothy Fitzgerald is essentially correct in his critiques of the category of religion. As it is currently formulated, it is a product of a Western colonial enterprise, which has made it overly vague, inconsistent, and (like in India or Japan) often unuseful. Where I would challenge Fitzgerald is in his conclusion that religion is not just flawed, but inherently an invalid analytical category; I find this an excuse to avoid the difficult work of postcolonial analysis. Instead of labeling the West and East as disconnected religious environments, I would argue we can learn from our differences — in a way that doesn't privilege Christianity — to form a new category of religion that overcomes the often arbitrary West–East distinction. I believe Fitzgerald is too strict in his requirement for a valid category of religion. The category doesn't have to be universally recognized, only analytically useful. It doesn't have to place institutions in the binary of “religious” or “secular”; it can encompass phenomena of which institutions utilize. The category doesn't have to be tied to the world religions paradigm; it can be formulated in uncountably many ways. We can make a new category of religion — my final question to Fitzgerald is: would you be open to it?