In my teaching I occasionally have opportunity to refer to the Greek text of the Christian Scriptures. One common verb form is what we call the "present indicative active," which is used to describe an action that is continuous and ongoing in the present. I bring that up because it pretty much encapsulates my effort to escape academe's D List: continuous and ongoing.
Which is to say, not much is happening in my search for a better teaching job in religious studies.
I have done all of the requisite activities with which readers of these columns are intimately familiar. I have pored over job ads, studied the Web sites of religious-studies departments, carefully shaped cover letters, corralled recalcitrant letter writers, learned how to use the Automatic Postal Center (open 24 hours!), and waited for something to happen. It's a frustrating but familiar position for many academic job candidates.
But there has been one thing I had not expected: While a lot of job openings are available in my field, I'm having trouble finding positions to apply for.
Let me explain: The field of religious studies can be subdivided into three main sectors. The first treats the study of religion as a science; the goal is to describe and explain religions and religious experience in much the same way that a historian analyzes historical events or a sociologist does patterns of human behavior.
While factions exist within that sector, there is also widespread agreement within it about the goals of studying religion, including the judgment that scholars' personal religious faith should play no role in their scholarship. It's not that scholars cannot believe in the religion they study, but that belief cannot be allowed to color their work.
The second sector is somewhat more complex. It includes seminaries and theology departments at colleges affiliated with specific religious denominations. The study of religion in those institutions is not seen to be primarily descriptive but constructive. That is, their goal is to develop pastors, serve congregational and denominational needs, and speak from a particular theological perspective. Consequently, faculty members at such institutions are expected to "do theology" rather than to describe the phenomena of religion. And hiring committees at those institutions usually like to hire people who are members of the denomination with which the college is affiliated.
The denominational requirements of job applicants in that sector can be quite specific. I found a job ad that matched my credentials perfectly and was at an institution that falls within my own denomination. When I inquired, however, the head of the search panel told me that I probably would not be a strong candidate because I currently teach at a college that belongs to a different sect of our denomination.
The third sector of my field may be the most complex of all. That category includes private universities which retain the vestiges of their Christian pasts while increasingly adopting the methods and outlooks of the first sector's approach. I'm thinking here of the divinity schools at Harvard University or the University of Chicago, or the theology departments at some Roman Catholic universities, where there is a mix of first-rate theologians who attempt to speak for, and to, their faith communities, and first-rate religious-studies scholars who attempt to describe the phenomenon of religion.
I teach now at a college that falls in the second sector, but my academic specialty usually shows up in the third. As a result, the departments where I would be the most marketable do not often advertise for what I do. And the ones that do advertise for what I do are not usually inclined to hire someone with my background at a D-List college.
I have found several openings in departments that fall into the second sector, but only a few of them are prestigious enough to help me in my quest to move up the academic hierarchy. I am most interested in an opening for someone in my specialty at a department in the third sector. I would be perfect for the job; so, of course, would the other 300 people who will no doubt apply.
I completely understand the rationale for the departmental divisions within my field, even though they limit the kind of positions I can apply for. Students at a secular college or university certainly should never be forced to adhere to a particular religious perspective, any more than should students at a religious college be taught from a perspective hostile to their own.
Moreover, the growing intensity of our culture's encounter with various forms of religious expression necessitates an objective, critical approach to religion. The systematic study of religion as a phenomenon can help us better understand the dynamics of contemporary religious experience in all its complexity.
At the same time, I'm beginning to think there must be a better way to organize the study of religion. I have looked at a lot of departmental Web sites in my field during the past few months, and I have discovered a discipline with a severe identity crisis.
Religion departments expend a great deal of effort in an attempt to justify their existence. That usually comes off as something like (I'm paraphrasing here): "Religion majors really do get jobs."
Other departments, especially those at research universities, take a less-commercial approach and emphasize how religious study corresponds closely with other disciplines, such as history or sociology -- the point being that religious study is a real discipline that produces real research.
That would explain the priority given to specialization by those departments, but I wonder if it doesn't have the unintended consequence of diminishing the value of religion departments. If the study of religion cashes out as history or sociology, then it becomes difficult to explain why religion is a separate discipline from history or sociology.
I regret that insecurity because I believe that the study of religion could be the moment in a liberal-arts curriculum that connects all of the other disciplines. Theologians used to assert that theology was the "queen of the sciences," and I think we could make a similar claim about the study of religion in general.
Among the disciplines of a liberal university, religion is the great unifier. It is the one discipline that invites all the other disciplines to the table, in terms of both method and subject matter. The great religions pay attention to every aspect of human existence. The study of religion could, therefore, help students understand what it means to be a person and to recognize the humanity of other people; what it means to appreciate the natural world; and how to cultivate a sense of transcendence. Along the way, it could help our students understand why religion endures as a fundamental human experience.
Far from apologizing for their existence, then, religious-studies departments should embrace their role as the place where students can have a far-ranging conversation about all sorts of issues. Unfortunately, departments are so fragmented and suspicious of one another that we cannot have that conversation.
I don't have a comprehensive blueprint for how to change that, and I recognize that scholars in a variety of disciplines are thinking about similar issues. In light of my current situation, however, I do have one suggestion: Religious-studies departments should recognize that religious belief and theological training do not prevent the possibility of studying a religion objectively. Religious belief and theological training can, in fact, enhance the objective study of religion by forcing students to take it more seriously as a real, lived phenomenon.
By the same token, theology departments need to recognize that the objective, scientific study of religion can enhance the lived experience of that religion. All religions surely have a commitment to the truth, and a scientific approach to religion would seem to be essential in allowing us to be self-critical about the strengths and weaknesses of our faiths.
In each case, that would require a fundamental change in hiring practices, but I am convinced that doing so would result in a renaissance of religious studies.
In the meantime, out of more than 300 jobs, I have found only four that I have a fighting chance of getting and that would be a legitimate step up. Those are long odds, but the more I search, the more confident I am that I have something to say to my discipline. Now if I can only find someone who will allow me to say it.
