Opinion of the "scholar-practitioner" model?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's a general principle in religious studies--as opposed to theology, the difference being that theology starts from the beliefs of the theologian's religion and goes from there whereas religious studies is supposed to be an empirical discipline--that one shouldn't make an academic focus of the same religion one practices. That is, Catholics should focus on a religion that isn't Catholicism, Jews should focus on a religion that isn't Judaism, Muslims should focus on a religion that isn't Islam, atheists should focus on religion rather than irreligion, etc. This principle isn't a hard-and-fast rule--I was never run out of courses on Catholicism for being Catholic and my favorite professor certainly wasn't disallowed from teaching courses on Judaism because she was Jewish--but it's a sort of polite rule of thumb that somebody has to be a pretty damn good scholar to get away with flouting.

The exception to this is Buddhism, in which the norm is "scholar-practitioners" who both study Buddhism academically and practice some form of Buddhism or Buddhist-derived meditation. I've never quite understood why this double standard exists. If a Shaktist likely isn't going to be an objective scholar of Shaktism due to his or her own belief in the subjective worldview that he or she is studying, why would a Zen practitioner be expected to be an objective scholar of Zen? I don't know if I think this double standard favors Buddhism--since the result is that Buddhism gets a corps of religious studies scholars who are predisposed to treat it sympathetically beyond what any other religion gets--or disfavors it--since it coddles it and (some--certainly not all!--of the time) exposes it to a sloppier level of scholarly work than it deserves. However, one could also argue that other religions should have scholar-practitioners rather than that Buddhism shouldn't, since one thing scholar-practitioners do have is inside knowledge about the felt sense of belonging to the religion they're studying, inside knowledge that people who don't belong to the religion can only gain secondhand. Thus, the poll question can be understood as a specific case of the old insider vs. outsider debate in studies of social phenomena in general.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't have strong feelings either way, but my tendency is to say FM. I don't really think "objectivity" is either possible or desirable in the humanities, and intimate personal knowledge of a religion is easily a plus in terms of being able to provide insights from it (although it doesn't automatically make one's perspective more valid either, of course).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I guess HM very, very narrowly. But it's close and I'm mushy on this.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'd be curious what the breakdown of Buddhist scholar-practitioning looks like in the west versus the east. Westerners often do not esteem Buddhism as a religion and approach its practice more as a philosophy, so if the phenomenon of people studying Buddhism academically and also practicing it is a primarily western one, it could be related to a failure to properly esteem it as a system of religious belief.

     Otherwise, I suppose FM. One of the things I am conscious of as a Christian is that religious studies academia is totally disconnected from Christian faith, because of the secularism that pervades it. This leads to scholars of Christianity proposing and forwarding strange hypotheses that no Christian takes seriously. One may object though that academia has no obligation to serve Christians, or any other religious group.

     This leaves the role of developing the faith on a historical and intellectual level to Christian writers who have little formal training in the practice. Some of them are hacks who eisegetically read whatever they want into Christian texts and practices, but some of them are very talented and perform a role for the faithful that far outstrips any university-affiliated academic.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

     I'd be curious what the breakdown of Buddhist scholar-practitioning looks like in the west versus the east. Westerners often do not esteem Buddhism as a religion and approach its practice more as a philosophy, so if the phenomenon of people studying Buddhism academically and also practicing it is a primarily western one, it could be related to a failure to properly esteem it as a system of religious belief.

I can't speak to the way religious studies academia operates in Asia, but fwiw, practically no Western religious studies scholar buys the "it's a philosophy, not a religion" line.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'd be curious what the breakdown of Buddhist scholar-practitioning looks like in the west versus the east. Westerners often do not esteem Buddhism as a religion and approach its practice more as a philosophy, so if the phenomenon of people studying Buddhism academically and also practicing it is a primarily western one, it could be related to a failure to properly esteem it as a system of religious belief.

I can't speak to the way religious studies academia operates in Asia, but fwiw, practically no Western religious studies scholar buys the "it's a philosophy, not a religion" line.

     Good to hear that, and perhaps it relates to scholars of Buddhism also being practitioners. Christianity is not so fortunate with religious studies academia. The example that comes to mind is people trying to pick apart the Pauline corpus and say he didn't write this or that epistle. There have been various important criticisms of the methods employed, but when the critics are outside of academia they tend to get overlooked.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Interesting. Catholicism/Christianity are among the only areas I would ever consider devoting a career to understanding, and not really in a theological sense at all. It was part of my undergrad honors thesis, in a sense.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

It's a general principle in religious studies--as opposed to theology, the difference being that theology starts from the beliefs of the theologian's religion and goes from there whereas religious studies is supposed to be an empirical discipline--that one shouldn't make an academic focus of the same religion one practices. That is, Catholics should focus on a religion that isn't Catholicism, Jews should focus on a religion that isn't Judaism, Muslims should focus on a religion that isn't Islam, atheists should focus on religion rather than irreligion, etc. This principle isn't a hard-and-fast rule--I was never run out of courses on Catholicism for being Catholic and my favorite professor certainly wasn't disallowed from teaching courses on Judaism because she was Jewish--but it's a sort of polite rule of thumb that somebody has to be a pretty damn good scholar to get away with flouting.

Not sure how true this is. I'm only somewhat familiar with the field of Biblical scholarship but there you have Raymond Brown, E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright and more Jews than you can shake a stick at. Would be surprised if (at least in the United States, probably less so in Europe) most academic work in Biblical studies isn't done by confessional Christians.

The exception to this is Buddhism, in which the norm is "scholar-practitioners" who both study Buddhism academically and practice some form of Buddhism or Buddhist-derived meditation.

Also not sure how true this is. AFAIK there are many western academic scholars of Buddhism who don't engage in Buddhist practices, I'm thinking of Richard Gombrich who has criticised meditation as self-centring and at odds with helping others.

Of course Buddhism is different in that the religion takes an explicitly therapeutic approach which makes it easier to pick Buddhist practices without taking on its theology.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also not sure how true this is. AFAIK there are many western academic scholars of Buddhism who don't engage in Buddhist practices, I'm thinking of Richard Gombrich who has criticised meditation as self-centring and at odds with helping others.

This isn't true of Gombrich specifically, but the Western tendency to view Buddhist practice as revolving entirely around meditation, with various optional add-ons depending on the type of Buddhism, is another bête noire of mine. It's probably one that's beyond the scope of this thread, though.