Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologically Atheistic Or Agnostic?

Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologically Atheistic or Agnostic?

Michael A. Cantrell

Abstract

Peter L. Berger famously argued that any scientific inquiry into religious matters must be “methodologically atheistic.” But methodological atheism performs no proper normative function in the academic study of religion; it fabricates, trivializes, and ren- ders inexplicable religious experience; it is not neutral or objective; and the argument for its normativity improperly legitimates a secular worldview. Furthermore, the argument for the normativity of methodological agnosticism suffers some of the same flaws and has distinctive flaws of its own, including hindering scholars from artic- ulating good reasons to believe that certain religious experiences are delusions and exhibiting self-referential incoherence.

Keywords methodological atheism – methodological agnosticism – bracketing – Peter Berger – naturalism – religious experience – neutrality

The idea that methodological naturalism is normative for the academic study of religion enjoys wide currency among scholars of religion. This view—that a form of naturalism is best suited for the study of religion—is one that many nonspecialists would find counterintuitive. No doubt the truth frequently is counterintuitive and scholarly integrity often compels one to abandon naïvely- held preconceptions. But in this case it turns out that the nonspecialist’s intu- ition can be rigorously supported by scholarly considerations. As this paper demonstrates, methodological naturalism—however useful for certain limit- ed purposes—is not normative for the academic study of religion.1

1 This chapter is a revision and updating of my “Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologi- cally Atheistic or Agnostic?” originally published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 2 (2016): 373–400, by permission of Oxford University Press.

In his classic work in the sociology of religion, The Sacred Canopy, Peter L. Berger famously asserted that “every inquiry into religious matters that limits itself to the empirically available must necessarily be based on a ‘methodological atheism’.”2 Less widely discussed is that shortly after that book’s comple- tion, Berger—a liberal Protestant Christian—became unhappy with the nega- tive impact that claim might have on his unwary believing readers.3 As a result, Berger added a clarifying appendix to The Sacred Canopy,4 and later wrote an entire book addressing the theological implications of his arguments.5 In that later book, A Rumor of Angels, Berger described The Sacred Canopy as “a theo- retical work that… read like a treatise on atheism.”6 Berger thus acknowledged that his commitment to the normativity of methodological atheism had a sig- nificant shaping influence on his scholarly work.7 Berger’s work on these methodological issues was done in the 1960s and 1970s, during the ascendancy of positivism in American sociology. One must bear in mind that Berger’s arguments were fashioned in that context. Since that time, important changes bearing on the study of religion have occurred, including the continued decline of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant estab- lishment,8 the heightening of post-modern sensibilities,9 an attack from theology on the legitimacy of the social scientific study of religion,10 and a renais- sance of philosophical attention to, and respect for, religious issues.11 But even

2 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1969), 100. 3 Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 184–185; Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), x. 4 Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 179–185. 5 Berger, A Rumor of Angels. 6 Berger, A Rumor of Angels, ix. 7 Berger was not always a proponent of the normativity of methodological atheism (see Peter L. Berger, The Precarious Vision: A Sociologist Looks at Social Fictions and Christian Faith (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961); William R. Garrett, “Troublesome Transcen- dence: The Supernatural in the Scientific Study of Religion,” Sociological Analysis 35, no. 3 (1974): 170. 8 See Mark U. Edwards, Jr., “Private Belief, Public Scholarship,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 34, no. 3 (2006). 9 See Gavin Hyman, “The Study of Religion and the Return of Theology,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72, no. 1 (2004): 202–17. 10 See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford, UK: Black- well, 1993); John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London, UK: Routledge, 1999); James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004); Hyman, “The Study of Religion and the Return of Theology,” 195–219. 11 See Alvin Plantinga, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” Faith and Philosophy 1, no. 3 (1984): 264–65.