The Dialectical Approach to Understanding Religion

Religion is one of the most controversial topics in the social sciences, and it is not surprising that a great deal of scholarship has been devoted to it. The debate over the nature of religion cuts across many disciplines, including anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology. There is also an important scholarly literature on religion in the field of cognitive science, which seeks to develop a scientific theory of how human beings process religious information.

There are two basic approaches to the definition of religion. One approach, called a monothetic definition, defines religion by what it is (or at least what people believe to be so). The other approach, known as a functional definition, defines religion by what a form of life can do for its adherents. The functional definition was pioneered by Emile Durkheim and continues to be a prominent feature of sociological thinking about religion.

In addition, there is a growing interest in a third option, sometimes referred to as a polythetic definition. This approach is based on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his notion of “family resemblance.” In this view, there are a variety of phenomena that may be labeled religion. But they all have various crisscrossing and partially overlapping features, much like members of a family. This approach has been particularly popular in the study of religion in the wake of the failure of substantive and functional definitions to provide reliable criteria for distinguishing what is and is not religion.

A central criticism of substantive definitions is that they are ethnocentric, focusing on belief and personal experience and neglecting faith traditions that emphasize immanence or oneness. A related criticism is that functional definitions fail to address the complex and contested nature of religion in its historical context, including the ways that religion can foster social conflict and undermine social order, as well as the role it can play in reinforcing inequality and perpetuating problems such as poverty and violence.

As a result, scholars are increasingly turning to the dialectical method, which involves exploring the interplay of different interpretive frameworks in the course of studying a phenomenon. The goal is to achieve a fuller understanding of the complexity and variety of religious phenomena.

The method has several important advantages over other interpretive methods. It is free of logical fallacies and does not assume that there is one single interpretation that will illuminate all of the facts of a particular case. It also avoids the dangers of hermeneutics, which is the tendency to fix upon a single interpretative key in the study of a text or phenomenon. Moreover, the dialectical method allows for a more holistic and nuanced appreciation of the nature of religion. In this way, it can help us to move beyond the simplistic dichotomy of good versus evil. It can also lead to more constructive conversations between religious leaders and other stakeholders in society about how best to promote public goods such as peace and the common good.