Religion and Public Intellectuals

Religion provides a topic of discourse in which some of the most famous of today’s public intellectuals readily interact. On one side this includes famous atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and from another direction come religious thinkers and leaders such as C S Lewis and Reinhold Niebuhr as past examples and more recently Abdolkarim Soroush, Pope Benedict XVI, Hans Küng and Tariq Ramadan.

Russell McCutcheon (1997a) has highlighted the under explored potential of scholars of religion to act as public intellectuals. He states that their role should be limited to that of a critic. [McCutcheon, R. (1997a) “A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65/2:443-468.] In addition to this, O’Connor (1998) argues that the role should be broader than this; enabling the public to knowledgeably participate in the debates of scholars and stimulating the public’s own self critical reflection [O’Connor, J. (1998) Response: The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual:Expanding Critical Intelligence Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66/4: 897-908] .

O’Conner (1998) argues that religious enthusiasts should be confronted by public intellectuals to consider the functions that religion can have, for instance, to be an illusion, opiate or patriarchal force – referring to the theories of religion held by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and broadly speaking, Feminism. On the other hand she also asserts that intellectuals should challenge contemporary despisers of religions to recognise religion as a force for positive social change by empowering believers with hope and survival when they are met with suffering, as well as a tool that provides further perspectives and insights on today’s pressing questions and dissects culture.

McCutcheon (1997a) discusses the appropriate role which scholars of religion should assume in moral debates and judgements made on religions. The question is – should they take sides? Some key aspects that typically define public intellectuals are the passion with which they present ideas, the strength of conviction that characterises their opinions and an aversion to letting themselves, or anyone else, sit on the fence. In this way, public intellectuals are distinct from their purely academic counterparts and therefore in order for scholars of religion to be classified as a true public intellectual, they should not shy away from making critical judgements about the beliefs and practices of religions, and even use the lens of religious philosophy through which to see the world.

Some have argued that scholars of religion suffer from a sense of inferiority, almost embarrassment. Carter, S. (1993) argues that elite, liberal and secular society has actively trivialised and marginalised those with a religiously inspired viewpoint [Carter, S. (1993) The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion New York: Doubleday.] . McCutcheon (1997a) reacts to this saying that schools of religion have done this to themselves. Raschke (1986) sees the failure of scholars of religion as public intellectuals is in not distinguishing good from bad, or normal from abnormal religion [Rachke, C. 1986 “Religious Studies and the Default of Critical Intelligence” Journal of the American Academy of religion 54/1:131-138] . Eileen Barker is an example, who, as a sociologist of religion, has founded an impartial charity called INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements [http://www.inform.ac/infmain.html] ) that provides factual information on religious movements for public use.

There is a debate of epistemological legitimacy to do with what the appropriate relationship should be between religion and public intellectual life. McCutcheon (1997a) argues that it is necessary for scholars of the religion to “admit” that they are unable to know how or what reality is (1997a:453) and that critical intelligence should reject the role of providing normative guidance; a position that disallows the possibility of objective truth claims. O’Connor (1998) argues that the public figures cannot be automatically disregarded due to strong moral or religious beliefs as being of lesser intellectual value, for “disbelief requires self-critical reflection as much as belief does. For even disbelief is based on some sort of belief: belief in the impossibility of knowing metaphysically- or ontologically-cast religious claims that affirm a trans-historical dimension to reality; belief in the impossibility of whether any human claims can be regarded as true in any compelling sense; belief in Enlightenment rationalism as the only trustworthy regime of truth.” O’Conner 1998:906. McCutcheon’s position also differs from that of moral intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, ‘who see the role of the public intellectual as being proactive, of speaking truth to power, exposing lies, and making normative claims’ (Chomsky 1993:60 [Chomsky, N. (1987) "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" The Chomsky Reader, 59-82. Ed. by James Peck. New York: Pantheon Books.] ; Said 1996:XVI [Said, E. 1996 Representations of the Intellectual New York: Vintage Books] , cited by McCutcheon 1997a).

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