The evolution of the academic study of religion is a fascinating one for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the manner in which religious studies has developed a genealogy of its own development as a modern intellectual project. In the process, the very notion of "religion" itself has come under intense scrutiny and historical contextualization. The result is that much of the work product of scholars of religion consists in the construction of counter-narratives: to prevailing prejudices, dogmatism (a sophisticated form of prejudice), and what is generally termed "common knowledge" (typically a witches brew of unexamined assumptions, hearsay, intuition, and speculation).
Religion is a subject concerning which most people hold opinions--often very strong opinions--to which they have arrived, however, without having engaged in the kind of thoughtful investigation that they would ordinarily apply to other important aspects of their lives: say, for example, the purchase of a new car or flat-screen T.V.
If scholars of religion can be faulted for anything, it is that we tend to "over-think" our subject--stumbling over minutia that the average, reasonably educated individual either fails to see or fails to find worthy of a moment's consideration. In that way, perhaps, we offer some compensation for the general lack of appropriate attention accorded to our subject. What would be far better, however, is the incorporation of religious studies as an integral part of a "general education"--that it would assume its rightful place among the intellectual tools available to any (and every) citizen of a functioning democracy.
Of course, the first problem in the opening decades of the 21st century has been to locate and identify functioning democracies...
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