Academic Study of Religion: The Contribution to the American Society

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Academic Study of Religion: The Contribution to the American Society
Background
For most people in the United States of America, studying religion has meant studying part Christian theology and Christian history, largely in Christian-ethos educational institutions ranging from elementary school to third-level college and university. And the so-called ‘other religions’, that for a long time meant only or Catholicism or Protestantism depending on an ideological standpoint, nit only depends on one, but now extends to Islam, and may be included through ‘Ecumenics’ or ‘Inter-Faith Dialogue’, but only in relation to a theological perspective of Christianity (Smidt, 35).
With reference to Christianity, this type of “confessional” approach has been embedded in many American institutions and even adopted by various other religions such as Jewish and Islam in various institutions that have religious basing on their studies and is often inculcated in both the staff and students alike. A vast majority of American schools have explicit affiliations to some sort of religion or religious institution and this makes it almost impossible to have a scientific study of religion taking place.
Introduction
The academic study of religion takes a different approach from that of confessional theology, whether it is that of Protestants, Shia, Catholics, Thervada, Buddhist etc, and is widely studied in universities and colleges around the globe. The Academic study of religion has helped shape open-mindedness in the manner of inquiry of subject matter, and the implementation of egalitarian standards in selection of staff and students are often applied in the other academic disciplines that are reputable. (Jensen & Rothstein, 2008) A department that that fosters academic study of religions would never apply a religious, not gender etc, exam to any member of any appointed staff, or admitted student. On the other hand, the academic study of religion would be irrelevant to academic experts and only encourages the academically sound contributions to scholarships from those that belong to all religions and none in specific. Due to this, the many scholars spread across the international sphere are quite able to engage internationally and on an equal platform with their other colleagues around the world. This, indeed, has led to training of a umber of scholars in a wide range of disciplines from history to philology to folklore.
The Academic Study of Religions has fostered a critical and analytical that is at the same time cross-cultural, study of religions, in the past and in the present. As the an orientalist, Max Müller once observed of languages, “He who knows only one, knows none”, (Singh 206) this same principle applies to religion as a study. ASR has its special focus of study within the human and social sciences too and this special focus mainly emphasizes on religions as th...