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Research Methods in the Study of Religion

Phenomenology of Religion Phenomenology of religion, methodological approach to the study of religion that emphasizes the standpoint of the believer. Drawing insights from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, especially as exemplified by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), it seeks to uncover religion’s essence through investigations that are free from the distorting influences of scholarly or traditional values and prejudices.

Anthropology of Religion

Sociology of Religion Sociology of Religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. This objective investigation may include the use of both quantitative methods (surveys, polls, demographic and census analysis) and qualitative approaches such as participant observation, interviewing, and analysis of archival, historical and documentary materials

History of Religions

Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of religion is the philosophical examination of the themes and concepts involved in religious traditions as well as the broader philosophical task of reflecting on matters of religious significance including the nature of religion itself, alternative concepts of God or ultimate reality, and the religious significance of general features of the cosmos (e.g., the laws of nature, the emergence of consciousness) and of historical events (e.g., the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, the Holocaust). Philosophy of religion also includes the investigation and assessment of worldviews (such as secular naturalism) that are alternatives to religious worldviews. Philosophy of religion involves all the main areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, value theory (including moral theory and applied ethics), philosophy of language, science, history, politics, art, and so on.

Psychology of Religion A modern field of study in which the concepts and methods of psychology are applied to religious experience and behaviour. One of the first to investigate such possible applications of psychology was W. James; he studied the experience of well-being or of conflict in human response to God, and the experiences of religious conversion and of saintliness and mysticism. Many of the writings of S. Freud (1856–1939) on psychoanalysis contributed to the psychological study of religion, though his critical and reductionist views of religion no longer command assent. Similarly the conclusions of C. G. Jung (1875–1961), though by contrast tending to assign an almost indiscriminate validity to religious phenomena in human experience, have in turn led to restatements of permanent value for the psychology of religion. Since the early 1960s more sophisticated methods of analysis have been developed. Religious behaviour and experience have been studied in relation to age, to cognitive style and other personal characteristics, and also with reference to pathological and drug-induced conditions. Merely psychological methods, however, cannot fully answer questions about the validity of religious behaviour and experience, even if they can account for some aspects of both in non-religious terms.

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How to Study Religion? Notes on Research Methodology in the Context of Latin American Religions

• Original Papers
• Open access
• Published: 23 January 2023
• Volume 7 , pages 235–253, ( 2023 )

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• Donizete Rodrigues   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2680-204X 1  

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The aim of this paper is to discuss on the main methodological procedures used in Anthropology and Sociology and applied in studies of Latin American religions, particularly in the context of diasporic Brazilian Protestantism-Pentecostalism. After introduce the two principal categories (quantitative and qualitative) – which include various types of procedures, such as the case study, interdisciplinary, historical, comparative and cross-cultural—and based on ethnographic experiences of the author in America, Europe and Asia, examine the world scale and ‘glocal’ multi-situated ethnography and the traditional localized participant-observation, including the ‘outsider-insider dichotomy’ and Asia, the article examines. However, today, with new digital technologies and the broad cultural and religious manifestations in the Internet, the researcher can complement the search for information (ethnographic data)—and accompany of the daily life of the group, of the community under study—using the Internet, the various social networks, namely, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. The principal contribution of this work is to present the specificities of the ethnographic field in the studies of religious movements, evangelical churches, in particular, where issues and problems posed to researchers requiring appropriate ethical and methodological procedures for overcoming them.

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Introduction

Firstly, it is relevant to explain that this text is not an exhaustive discussion about research methodologies in the study of religion—many other authors have already discussed this issue in a more complete and detailed way (Dillon 2003 ; Davie 2007 ; Stausberg and Engler 2011 )—but only bring some notes on the main methodological procedures used in Anthropology and Sociology and applied in studies of Latin American religions, particularly in the context of diasporic Brazilian Protestant-Pentecostalism.

After introduce the two principal categories (quantitative and qualitative) – which include various types of procedures, such as the case study, interdisciplinary, historical, comparative and cross-cultural—and based on ethnographic experiences of the author in America, Europe and Asia, examine the world scale and ‘glocal’ multi-situated ethnography and the traditional localized participant-observation, including the ‘outsider-insider dichotomy’. However, today, with new digital technologies and the broad cultural and religious manifestations in the Internet, the researcher can complement the search for information (ethnographic data)—and accompany of the daily life of the group of the community under study—using the Internet and the various social networks, namely, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

As I mentioned above, the methodological procedures discuss here are related to the studies of religion, which is “one of the most important social forces in any society” (Day 2020 :vii). Trying to respond the pertinent question what does it mean and why to study religion in the present time (Ellwood 2016 ), in a very broad sense, and based on classic and contemporary anthropological and sociological perspectives (Harding and Rodrigues 2014 ), I consider that the studies of religion are very important for the understanding of the complex relationship between religion and society, particularly how the religious people organize their daily life, construct their worldview, and tempt to influence and make social and religious changes (for better world, according to them) in their groups/communities and the society in general.

In this specific case, there are three principal theoretical-methodological procedures (Brink 1995 ; Thorton 2022 : (a) phenomenological (the Weberian substantive theory), it concerns of essence, the meaning and nature of religion, and the experiential aspect of the religious phenomenon; (b) the study of religious groups and communities (the Durkheimian functionalism theory); and (c) lived religion/a religion vécue , with a holistic perspective, i.e., the study of all aspects of the beliefs, practices, and daily spiritual experiences of the followers of a particular religion movement.

The First Stage: Design the Project

Although there is not a unique or ideal methodological arrangement, a reasonable approach to a problem in social sciences is the following (Bechhofer and Paterson 2000 ; Hunt and Colander 2017 ):

Define the problem and objectives of the project.

Review the literature, the “state of the art” to become familiar with what others already have studied.

Develop a theoretical framework based on classical and contemporary authors and theories.

Choose the research design—methodologies and techniques.

Collect the data—empirical fieldwork.

Analyze the results.

Draw conclusions and write the final report (paper/article, dissertation, thesis, book).

In the design of a scientific research project, the choice of appropriate methodology is determined by the proposed objectives: what kind of information the researcher wants or needs to obtain and, paraphrasing Bauman ( 2000 ), writing sociologically on?

The Different Types of Methods

The method is a body of practices, procedures, and rules used in the process of searching data and information, in a specific knowledge field. In the case of the social sciences (Anthropology and Sociology), based on theories and previous empirical observations, social scientists use the method as an integrated strategy to organize their research practices (Bechhofer and Paterson 2000 ).

The method helps in the selection, observation, collection, classification, and analysis of social phenomena, that is, of social reality (Riis 2009 ). The techniques, in turn, are the instruments and practices for collecting and processing information, and they include oral, documents, film/video, photography, and statistical data.

Quantitative and qualitative constitute the predominant and the most relevant methodological categories; however, there are other important methods that we can use in the social sciences, as the following (Hunt and Colander 2017 ).

Case study : involves making a detailed study and analysis of a specific issue or problem situation. Case studies can be qualitative, quantitative, or be both together.

The interdisciplinary approach : a group of researchers from different fields of study work together on a particular issue or problem.

The historical method : tracing the principal past events that seem to have been directly significant in bringing about a present social-cultural-religious situation. This is the concept that the knowledge of the past can give insights into present circumstances and even to future trends.

Comparative and cross-cultural methods : the comparison of different societies, groups, and phenomenon play an important role in anthropological and sociological studies. The method consists of making detailed research of the social/cultural/religious and behavioral patterns of the members of societies for the purpose of comparing the similarities among them.

Let me get back to the discussion of quantitative and qualitative methods, my focus in this part of the paper.

Specifically, in social sciences, there are two principal and well-known methods, i.e., two interrelated modes of producing knowledge: quantitative and qualitative. Although they can be associated (“quali-quanti” combined procedures)—according to Riis ( 2012 ), divide between quantitative and qualitative methods is unclear, unnecessary, and unfruitful—generally speaking, the quantitative is considered to be more sociological (macro-social analysis), while the qualitative is more anthropological (micro-social perspective).

Quantitative studies use surveys, polls, and questionnaires aiming to obtain data and information. It involves social characteristics as variables (subject to standardized measurement and attributed with numeric values), statistical analysis of data in numeral form that has been gathered and classified, which provide material capable to understand the broad social and cultural processes and even some particular meanings.

A pertinent question here is: why quantitative data are appropriate and important to the study of religion? Because it provides the quantification of trends and patterns of religious life and collective behavior (Stausberg and Engler 2011 ), moreover, according to Brink ( 1995 ), in general, quantitative data have the advantage of giving relatively precise hypothesis testing and are also less susceptible to the possibility of various interpretations.

Even considering that I do not use the quantitative data—math was never my favorite subject—in my research studies on religion, I use only the qualitative method. However, this personal option, from a methodological point of view, is not a problem: as I said above, the choice of methodology is determined by the previously defined objectives; indeed, the most important aspect is the type of information the researcher wants or needs to obtain.

Speaking now about the qualitative method, this procedure is useful if the main purpose is to follow a development closely over a period of time, and usually, it is geared to the study of specific social, cultural, and religious movements and relatively small groups and communities (Furseth and Repstad 2006 ; Riis 2009 ). Focused in two key questions “how” and “why,” the approaches provide a lot of rich descriptive detail that enables us to explore the meanings of belief and religious practice.

To conclude this part, it is important to retain two ideas: none methodological procedures is better than the other, and the researchers are not limited to only one, “because there is nothing especially sacred about either quantitative or qualitative methodologies” (Slife and Melling 2012 , p. 732).

Considering that this text focus on particularly the Anthropology, let me first discuss its traditional qualitative method.

Participant-Observation

In the empirical work, the most common qualitative technique used in Anthropology is the ethnography, i.e., the “anthropologist in the field” describing the groups/communities/societies and gathering information (Mauss 1947 ; Seligman 1951 ). Ethnography—a micro-sociology, from Weber and Simmel’s perspectives—is particularly interested in the relations between social actors, individuals or groups, and the positions and social roles that the actors occupy and play within the social milieu in which they are inserted.

In its beginning, to understand primitive societies, social/cultural Anthropology has developed a fieldwork procedure called “participant-observation,” a well-known term coined by Bronislaw Malinowski ( 1922 ), a Polish-born and English-based academic.

In the field, attempt to understand the viewpoint of a native culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986 ), the researcher does not merely observe, but also tries to integrate and fully participate in the daily activities of the group or society under study. This method involves prolonged observation, participation in all (or at least the principal) activities, and interviewing members of the group (DeWalt and DeWalt 2010 ; Bernard and Gravlee 2015 ). To be more specific, the.

fieldwork … describes the activities that take place in a particular research locale over the medium to long term … the researcher then studies the locale by living or working there for a period of time, or by making repeated visits (Bechhofer and Paterson 2000 , p. 91).

As Evans-Pritchard ( 1937 ), doing ethnographic fieldwork in Central Africa with the Azande, testified:

I tried to adapt myself to their culture by living the life of my hosts, as far as convenient, and by sharing their hopes and joys, apathy and sorrows. In many respects my life was like theirs: I suffered their illnesses; exploited the same food supplies; and adopted as far as possible their own patterns of behavior with resultant enmities as well friendships (p. 45).

In the specific case of the study of religion, of the homo religious , Sociology and Anthropology, using the comparative method, study the great diversity of beliefs and religious practices in different social-cultural context. This approach always involves the symbols, myths, rites, rituals and experiences of the sacred lived in the context of society (Geertz 1973 ; Bowie 2000 ; Stausberg and Engler 2011 ; Stein and Stein 2017 ). When we are researching on a specific case of a religious movement, an evangelical church, for instance, this anthropological method allows us an empathic understanding, acting, worshiping, feeling with, and for living within the congregation (Rodrigues 2014 ).

However, in the context of participant observation, there are two categories, or better explaining, two principal ways for the researcher to immerse in the study group: “outsider” or “insider.”

The “localized Study”: Outsider-Insider

In “localized studies,” the researchers—if they have conditions for it—can choose to be “outsider” or “insider.” Actually, the insider/outsider issue has been a subject for academic studies of religion since the beginnings of Sociology and Anthropology in the mid-nineteenth century (Arweck and Stringer 2002 ). For this reason, in the sociological and anthropological studies of religious movements, there is a large amount of literature discussing the importance insider–outsider dichotomies (Merton 1972 ; Geertz 1983 ; Headland et al.  1990 ; McCutcheon 1999 ; Ganiel and Mitchell 2006 ).

It is important to note that, methodologically, sometimes it is difficult to determine when the researcher is an outsider or insider, because there are different levels of “insiderness” and “outsiderness” (Arweck and Stringer 2002 ). Moreover, many sociologists and anthropologists argue the relationship of the terms insider and outsider as being less of a dichotomy and more as a continuum.

An important methodological question to consider is advantages bestowed upon and disadvantages besetting a researcher, as an insider, or as an outsider. While the outsider is excluded from many (and probably the most important) religious activities and discourse, the insider is enabled and equipped, to more fully, and from a first-hand point of view, to understand the religious group (“the tribe”) and their spiritual experiences (Ganiel and Mitchell 2006 ). As an insider, it is easier for the researcher to be accepted as one of them. As Geertz ( 1983 ) emphasizes in his interpretative anthropology, studying religion (as a system of symbols) in inextricably linked to its socio-cultural milieu, the outsider can observe , but only the insider can feel the human behavior and the religious experience (p. 60).

In the case of the study of religious movements (e.g., evangelical churches), this methodological strategy is extremely important: it allows active and prolonged participation in numerous social and religious events, special cults, prayer groups, vigils, and spiritual retreats. It is pertinent to point out that many of these activities (spiritual retreats, in particular) are only allowed to members that are effective, active, more dedicated, and committed to the church and to a faith community. In a study that I conducted on a Brazilian evangelical church in the New York metropolitan area, not only I used the observation-participant, but I was also “insider-believer ethnographer” (Rodrigues 2014 ).

The specific fieldwork methodology used in Anthropology—the “participant-observation,” being “outsider” or “insider” ethnographer—remains today the prevalent means of research in the “localized situations.” However, in the present times, there is a new paradigm, called ‘multi-sited ethnography’, a term coined by George Marcus ( 1995 ). He argues that the study of social/cultural matters cannot be adequately accounted for by focusing on a single site/place, like the traditional old studies on indigenous village. Let me explain better what multi-site ethnography is.

Multi-Site Ethnography

When the study is about migrations of people and religious groups in diasporic context, exemplified in this writing with the case of the global expansion of Brazilian religious movements (Rocha and Vasquez. 2013 ; Rodrigues and Oro  2014 ; Oosterbaan et al. 2019 ), which necessary involves a geographic dimension of world scale: what is the most appropriate methodology to study a phenomenon of such magnitude? For certain, the answer is the “multi-sited ethnography,” because it is most appropriate in the study of the grand scale of migrations (people and religions) with transcontinental dimensions.

According to Falzon ( 2009 ), “The essence of multi-sited research is to follow people, connections, associations, and relationships across space … multi-sited ethnography involves a spatially dispersed field through which the ethnographer moves” (p. 1–2). From the same perspective of “macro ethnography” (Appadurai 1996 ), it is a kind of “traveling anthropology.” In this case, the ethnographer makes multi-sited fieldwork, mapping routes, pathways, and flows rather than describing fixed and localize cultures.

In the context of post-modernity, replacing the (old) location (or located place) by multiple and dispersed places, the multi-sited ethnography focuses on translocal phenomena, diasporic situations, such as transnational migration flows, including people and religious movements. Much more than places, borders, and localized situations, the emphasis is the spatial mobility and the multiple locations and activities. The important objective is to follow the trajectories of a specific phenomenon, making connections and links between the elements, for example, the relationship between immigration and religion (Coleman and Hellerman  2011 ). In this context, while following people and religious movements, the researcher also becomes a traveler or, more specifically, a “traveler-ethnographer” (Appadurai 1996 ).

In a first phase, the researcher is a traveling ethnographer, mapping and meeting immigrants, and agencies and religious groups, in various geographic contexts. After this macro-ethnographic approach, as a second phase, the research prioritizes, in the respective countries, the localized situations, doing fieldwork with the religious groups/churches. As I mentioned earlier above, in the localized situations, by using the traditional participant observation, there is another methodological option: the ethnographer can be an outsider, insider, or use both practices/research perspectives.

There is another important issue that we can highlight here: how can site-specific participant observation and multi-sited ethnography approaches could be combined?

The multi-sited ethnography and participant observation are two different methodological procedures. Yet the researcher can easily compound them, without losing the specificity of each measure. Speaking about my experiences, in my studies on Brazilian evangelical movements’ expansion to USA, Europe, and Japan, I have been used both approaches. Let me explain better:

In the first step, I do multi-sited/macro-ethnography research, as a “traveler-ethnographer,” following the transnational flow of the religious movement. In this first prospective ethnography, the primary source of information is the specialized mission training agencies for pastors to evangelize in other countries. Another source is the official sites of the religious movements, which bring data and detailed information on their worldwide expansion.

In some cases, I do fieldwork in “localized situations,” using the method of participant-observation, being “outsider” or, in some specifically circumstances, a “native-insider-believer.” The meaning that I obtain from emic research, as an insider-believer, is much more relevant than of “mere observation,” because it grants me a fully participation in all activities of the churches and congregations (Rodrigues 2014 ).

In my experiences, I have had many situations as follows: what role the researcher should have in the fieldwork, and what responsibilities and tasks have been assigned to the ethnographer by leaders, pastors, and believers in the church structure and routine? After the followers (membership) consider that the “outsider” is already “converted,” what is the place the researcher should occupy in the church/congregation? To be more specific, what are their expectations about the new “born again,” in particular in the important task of converting others? Due to the complexity of these inquiries, combined with the specificities of the various types of religious movement, these kinds of questions are not easily adequately answered. However, as I mentioned above, the explanation depends on the procedure adopted: whether the researcher is being “outsider” or “insider” makes a big epistemological and methodological differences.

The methodological procedures discussed above basically refer to qualitative research, geographically located and with long-term engagement and physical presence of the researcher in the field (Thorton 2022 ). However, localized ethnography, in the classical perspective of Malinowski ( 1922 ) and, later, Geertz ( 1973 ), is predominant, but not the only one possible.

The Use of the Internet in the Study of Religion

According to Clifford Geertz’s interpretive Anthropology, ethnography is not merely a research methodology or a simply data collection technique. In fact, ethnography has a broader approach, focusing on the understanding of societies and groups, based on a “thick description” of the sociocultural and religious practices. The ethnographer, thus, aims to explain how these practices, experiences, and social dynamics constitute “webs of significance” (Geertz 1973 ).

Ethnographic fieldwork, in the traditional perspective of Malinowski and, later, of Geertz, implied (compelled) the long-term physical presence of the anthropologist in the field. However, today, with new digital technologies, the researcher can complement the search for information (ethnographic data)—and accompany of the daily life of the group of the community under study—using the Internet, the various social networks, namely, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp.

In the 1990s, to answer the need to adapt the classical ethnographic research method (in/of the geographic terrain) to the study of the virtual world (in/of digital media) and its methodological implications, several concepts and approaches emerged: netnography, virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, online ethnography, webnography, and cyberanthropology (Hjorth et al 2019 ).

In this context, a prominent term is netnography, being Robert Kozinets ( 2015 ) the greatest exponent. This author considers netnography (“internet ethnography” or “online ethnography”) as a specific type of qualitative research on social media/networks, which adapts the methodological procedures used in participant observation to the study of subcultures, groups and virtual communities, and the social interaction that occurs in the computer‐mediated communication. These interactions and experiences, which are manifested through digital communications, constitute the primary source of data and information for the ethnographic understanding of a particular social, cultural (and religious) phenomenon.

It is pertinent to emphasize that the first studies on social interactions on the Internet had an ethnographic base. Christine Hine, with the work virtual ethnography ( 2000 ), was one of the pioneers. According to Hine, cyberspace can be studied as culture, in the anthropological perspective. According to this view, the Internet is also a place where culture is (re)constituted. Thus, it is the role of the ethnographer, as an insider in the research context, in direct contact with the interlocutors, to study the phenomena and cultural practices that take place in the virtual communities.

With regard specifically to the application of online ethnography in the studies of religion, after the great development and massive use of the Internet on a worldwide scale, churches, historical religions, and thousands of new religious movements (NRMs) began to use this important means of communication (mass media) to hold and share religious events and spread their religious messages with proselytize purpose and to convert people. There are even churches and NRMs that only exist on the Internet, without occupying a physical, real place—they are the so-called “virtual churches,” “digital religion,” “religion online,” and “online religion” (Campbell and Tsuria 2021 ).

In cyberspace, people can, in a de-territorialized and timeless way, read about religion; interview religious leaders and followers; talk to other people about religion and their mystical-religious experiences (chat, conversation group); download sacred books (e.g., the Bible) and religious documents; view images and videos; listen to religious music, sermons, and testimonies; practice meditation; participate in virtual pilgrimages and religious rituals; and attend religious ceremonies, masses, and worship services (Hadden and Cowan 2000 ; Dawson and Cowan 2004 ; Hojsgaard and Warburg 2005 ).

At the end of 2019, a global biological occurrence altered radically the social life of all societies in the world. A dangerous virus has completely altered people’s lives, isolating them in cities, in neighborhoods, and at home. The serious pandemic situation caused by the coronavirus-19 has profoundly transformed people’s daily lives, causing significant changes in behavior, including the way religious communities engage in worship services. As Day ( 2020 ) pointed out, “the world was shuddering with the horrific impact of a pandemic. Lives, livehoods, faiths and certainties where shattered” (viii). Huygens ( 2021 ) adds: “in the times of COVID-19, it is no longer possible to invoke bodily engagements such as attending church services, going on a pilgrimage, experiencing sensory stimulations such as smelling incense, listening to Church hymns, or tasting the wafer” (p. 6).

As I mentioned above, the intensive use of Internet (social media) for religious reasons, especially by Christian churches and groups, to proselytization, hold, and share religious activities, was very common before the pandemic crisis. The implementation of lockdowns and strict social distancing protocols pressed strongly the religious movements and their leaders to invest even more in livestream platform to broadcast worship services online (Campbell 2020 ; Isetti 2022 ).

Yet, this new situation brought new challenges, especially to the Pentecostal movements, but also to afro-Brazilian religions that only recently begun to occupy the social media platform (Capponi and Araújo 2020 ; Lima 2022): considering the impossibility to attend physically places of worship and religious practices, how to deal with the important issue of the embodied participation in worship? As Campbell ( 2020 ) highlighted, using worship online, how to accomplish, the “Eucharist,” a special spiritual moment of the assembled congregation, which involves embodied elements of the incarnation? Isetti ( 2022 ) adds, would it be possible a kind of “cyber-Eucharist”? (p.2). There are authors, such as Hutching ( 2011 ) and Addo ( 2021 ), among others, who believe that is possible some form of “digital eucharist” (or “eucharist online”), with more relevance in Pentecostal communities. Nevertheless, Isetti ( 2022 ) argues that “in digital religion studies one of the main concerns that is raised” is “whether ‘disembodied’ or mediated interactions online can ever truly allow for an authentic religious expression and experience online” (p.2). As Huygens ( 2021 ) testified, “despite all these (online and remote) alternatives to physical gatherings, all my interlocutors stated that ‘it is not the same’” (p.6).

Quarantine and social distancing, caused by the pandemic, brought an enormous challenge to religious movements, namely, those working in diasporic contexts. However, their leaders, imaginative and with a great capacity for innovation and adaptation, easily migrated from physical to online spaces, finding thus new ways to express their religious devotion (Campbell 2020 ). As Addo ( 2021 ) imaginatively expressed, “the believers become digital spiritual hype people” (p. 53).

To close this idea, with regard specifically to religious practices, from the emergence of the pandemic crisis, religious groups, who are already very well-trained and experienced in practicing religion online, began to use even more the digital spaces to continue to be in contact with the followers, give spiritual support to them, and to take the religious message to a wider audience.

At the present time, in the called “post-COVID era,” with large vaccination protocols, the social distancing measures are being lifted. As a consequence, the faithful are returning to their “old” physical temples; however, negotiating the boundaries between online and offline spaces, they do not abdicate the very attractive and efficient “digital altar” (Addo 2021 ).

Another consequence of pandemic situation is that the academic people were (physically) separated from their primary work place—the university (where they teach) and from the ethnographic terrain (where they do research). From the methodological point of view, with the impossibility of real, physical contact, what would be the alternative for ethnographic research? The possible choice is to use social networks to accompany the daily lives of the followers, groups, and religious communities.

To conclude this brief methodological approach on the use of the internet in the study of religion, it is important to remember that Anthropology, throughout its history, has managed to adapt, epistemologically and methodologically, to historical and new cultural changes. The social impact of COVID-19, this invisible and deadly enemy for humanity has brought a new methodological challenge, but also new possibilities for ethnographic research. In a context of an increasingly digital world, ethnography had to adapt effectively, flexibly, and creatively to this new social and religious realities. And the specialized bibliography proves that this necessary methodological turn is being very successful.

When the researchers are in the field, physical and/or virtual, studying religious movements emerged many questions, doubts, and indecisions. And they observe also contradictions and have tensions moments and ethical dilemmas (Hale 2001 ). They often are bothered and even shocked by some “weird” or strange situations; in fact, each one of us has a story to report. Without intending to exhaust the situations, I discuss now some issues and problems that usually emerge in (my) fieldwork. Footnote 1

The Ethnographic Field: Methodological Issues and Problems

In order to discuss methodological issues and research problem in the ethnographic field—and the dissemination of the results—I considered several sociological and anthropological studies, classic and contemporary ones (see the bibliography). From this critical reading—and also based on my fieldworks experience—I formulated the following methodological procedures (Rodrigues 2018 ). With these practices, I intend to help researchers who are begin their social and cultural studies, on religion, in particular.

In the initial formulation and execution of a project, the researchers should go to the ethnographic work with a set of initial questions. However, they must be able to adapt them according to the reality on the field. In fact, at the end of the process, they leave the field and return to the office even with more questions/inquiries and uncertainties. As Thorton ( 2022 ) pointed out, “starting a new project required me to be flexible, adapt my approach, and alter my initial expectations” (p. 23).

When the ethnographer arrives for the first time in the field, it is necessary to carefully choose two important interlocutors, who will define the relative success (or lack thereof) of the study: the gatekeeper and key-informants . Speaking about gatekeeper first: “this is a data collection term and refers to the individual who the researcher must visit before entering a group or cultural site. To gain access, the researcher must receive this individual’s approval.” That is, the initial contact is made in negotiation with gatekeepers who retain the decision and the power of access to the “tribe” to the church and religious community/group. In the case of key-informants, “they are individuals with whom the researcher begins in data collection because they are well informed, accessible, and can provide leads about other information” (Creswell 1998 , p. 247).

One outstanding experience of participant observation in a different cultural context is the so-called cultural shock. Footnote 2 It implies the ethnographer’s difficulty in adapting to a new culture/society/religion/group context: receiving and transmitting wrong behavioral signals; not being able to have an appropriate conduct; and dealing with behaviors of the Other, which are—in the view of the ethnographer’s original culture—inappropriate, shocking, dirty, immoral, or simply different, but which are perfectly normal and acceptable within the social-cultural-religious context in which he/she is temporarily inserted.

It is common in the fieldwork that the ethnographers have been considered as socially and culturally misfit by the society that they are studying. With another process of socialization/endoculturation, and are unaware of the basic rules of sociability of the group under study, they have to learn the social rules of the new community where they are now inserted for some period of time.

Diaries and field notes are the primary techniques of recording data collected in the fieldwork. As Malinowski ( 1922 ) put it, “to bring home to the reader all the conditions in which … the observations were made” (p. 3). In addition, the researcher should take photographs, record (in audio and video) informal conversations and events, conduct interviews, and observe behaviors. These practices are primordial for recording of everyday cultural-religious practices and posterior construction of anthropological narrative and analysis of the group under study (Geertz 1988 ).

The ethnographer’s personal characteristics—such as ethnic/racial, nationality, identity, gender, age, social class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation—have a considerable (positive or negative) impact on fieldwork. I am Portuguese-Brazilian, and this attribute makes it easier for me to be accepted by Brazilian religious movements in the diaspora, evangelical churches, in particular. In this case, my ethnic-identity-linguistic characteristic greatly facilitated my insertion in the different evangelical congregations that I have been studied; I always was presented and seen by the followers and pastors as “Brazilian-evangelical-immigrant in need of religious-spiritual support” (field notes).

But look at another situation: in my study, in Portugal, of the Church of Philadelphia, a Neo-Pentecostal congregation, an ethnic-church whose membership are almost 100% gypsy families, the fact that I am not ethnically gypsy made me unable to better immersion in the community, that is, being an “insider”; thus, the methodological alternative was to be outsider. In this case, did not sharing the same ethnic affiliation, I stayed outside of the community, which restricted the access to valuable data, information, and some rituals.

Ethnic affiliation raises another question: the language. Do the researchers speak the language of the evangelical “tribe” that they are studying? For better immersion in the religious group/community under study, it is very important to be able to dialogue, without translators/intermediaries, with the followers; only that way the researcher can more easily gain the confidence of the key-informants and be able to share personal matters, collect testimonies, and participate in religious experiences.

In my studies on Brazilian immigrants, in the diasporic context in the USA, Europe, and Japan, and more recently on the expansion of evangelical churches among indigenous peoples in Amazon region (Rodrigues and Moraes 2018 ), the question of language is not a problem. However, the situation changed dramatically when I started to study, in 2015, the Tenrikyo, a Japanese Shinto movement, and a Pentecostal church in Cambodia, in 2016. In both situations, not speaking the native language, the alternative was to use translators/interlocutors. In the case of the New Life Church, in Phnom Penh, the founding pastor himself, of American origin, even living in the country for several years, does not speak Khmer; to overcome the situation, he nominated a native pastor to lead the cults and do the work of proselytism and evangelization. Therefore, being an “ethnic church,” religious ceremonies and worship are celebrated in the native language. For this reason, my study on this church was more sociological than anthropological; the preliminary ethnography was made in English and more observation than participation.

Although it may be uncomfortable to talk about personal matters, it is important that the researchers, when questioned directly by the “natives,” answer sincerely to questions about their religious beliefs/practices, opinions, and values. However, they should share opinions and personal information in the most neutral way as possible; it means never trying to influence the natives.

Taking into consideration the Weberian and Durkheimian methodological orientation, it is important to note that the study requires that the researchers abandon all their social, cultural, and religious prejudices in order not to influence the scientific explanations. The fieldwork, closely associated with the collection and interpretation of cultural practices (Geertz 1983 , 1988 ), challenges us to reflect critically on an important epistemological issue: the ethnographic look and reading could be filtered, distorted, or colored by our own ideas and feelings about religious orientation and world view.

In this context, studying religion, there is an imperative measure: the ethnographer must constantly be alert and self-conscious about ethical neutrality regarding the claim of “true/false.” That is, we must be “interested in what people say is the truth, the way people think the world works, their understanding of the mysteries of God … and their actual behaviour ” (Bowie 2000 , p. 49). In a very respectful manner, our concern should never be to test the “truth”: of belief, of religious practices, of ritual efficacy, or of judging divergent biblical interpretations (Wilson 1982 ). That is, we do not need to agree with, or to approve, in order to seek to understand the religious practices and meaning.

It is pertinent to remember here the Weberian epistemological/methodological procedure called “axiological neutrality” (Wertfreiheit). Axiological neutrality means that scientific research is exclusively valid for intrinsic reasons, by virtue of methods and procedures that are based on its specificity in the demonstration and verification of the scientific proposals. Despite the difficulty (or even impossibility) of a pure objectivity, the researchers, in any circumstances, should never make value judgments and condemn or approve the social and cultural practices (religion in particular) that they are studying.

Reciprocity is another important element of fieldwork. It involves the ethnographers to foster the livelihood and well-being to help the “natives” in many things, such as government-bureaucratic matters, to share personal property, information, and service provision, transporting people, if they are able to. Reciprocity also includes sharing the final results of the research with the community/group. This is essential for participatory research (action and applied Anthropology) and is especially important if the community studied can make good use of the sociological and anthropological information to solve some of their daily problems. For example, when I was doing my PhD thesis in social anthropology at Coimbra University, I spent 3 years (1988–1990) in a small peasant village in the interior of Portugal. Following the logic of reciprocity, I helped the locals with bureaucratic matters, shared information and data (the history of the village, land tenure, the birth/marriage/death registers, kinship relations, etc.), and transport in my car people to medical treatment and visit healers/witches very far from the village.

It is pertinent to refer here another situation of reciprocity. Because of my studies on gypsy communities in Portugal and Romania, between 2000 and 2007 (Rodrigues 2006b ), I participated in several academic meetings and conferences in Portugal, Hungary, and Cuba, promoted and sponsored by the European Parliament, and I contributed also to create European laws and regulations to establish the rights of Roma as an ethnic minority, including freedom of religious expression.

Because of the enormous circulation of information and knowledge dissemination, on a world scale, a pertinent question in this reality is: how much of a concern could it be for the researchers when the interlocutors (particularly, the pastors and leaders) read what was written about the religious group/church? Indeed, this issue is not new. Anthropologists have long faced a challenge that affects how they produce and disseminate the results of their study and their knowledge: “natives” can read the final text and may or may not agree with the interpretations/explanations given by them. Today, more and more people are connected to the Internet and consult information (texts, photographs, videos) available online. Considering that many of the scientific-academic publications are now accessible through electronic sources and devices, the work of the anthropologists can easily be previously and/or subsequently scrutinized by the individuals and groups involved in their research.

Yet there are two specific circumstances here: before or after the publication. Let me present example of both situations:

I once had a situation before the publication : the pastor-leader (the gatekeeper) of the First Baptist Church (localized at Marília, São Paulo, Brazil) placed a condition before allowing the research; he wanted to follow closely and read the final text with the results/explanations of the research, and we concurred (Rodrigues and Mendes 2018 ). The leader of the church only authorized the publication after making some minor changes, pointing out some “inaccuracies” in our explanations, but not enough to substantially modify the anthropological analysis. In this specific case, the result was very positive; because reading the preliminary text, he made several clarifications and brought new questions, contributing thus to a better anthropological interpretation of the object of study.

The case of after publication is more common: The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a religious, economic, and media empire, a Brazilian religious movement that I have been studying for two decades (Rodrigues 2006a ), is highly professional, especially in its relationship with media, social communication, and also academic publications. They have a specialized department that accompanies registers, catalog, and everything that is published about the church. The fact is that the leaders want to know how and what the journalist and academic are opining and writing about them and the UCKG.

Another important issue in ethnographic research is the ethical procedure of confidentiality. In the identification of the group, place, and people mentioned in the study, the researcher-author should use fictitious names, that is, should “anonymize” them in order to protect their identities.

There is a diverse set of scientific criteria to evaluate whether the empirical work was well done or not: the method, techniques, and concepts were well applied. The researcher was able to properly narrate the situation, event, and ceremonies. The description was sufficiently rich and detailed. The description followed objective criteria, and it is consistent with other data collected on the field. The locals, native, and believers agreed with the results and the interpretations. There are others explanations and interpretations that could be considered for the same cultural, social phenomenon, and religious practice. There are interpretations/explanations that can be generalized. The results created new theories/explanatory models and new methodological procedure.

In addition to these 12 methodological procedures, particularly applied in the study of religion, another pertinent question to bring here is: are there particular challenges in doing anthropology of religion that differ from what we can say, “activist anthropology”?

In my research on religious movements, and following the Weberian “wertfreiheit” that I discussed above, I try not to be an activist nor an applied anthropologist. Yet, it is important to highlight that although there are many similarities, “activist anthropology” and “applied anthropology” have not the same perspective.

In the applied Anthropology, anthropologists use their skill and knowledge to solve day-to-day native practical problems; “walking together while researching” is the well-known procedure. It provides a number of effective action strategies that can be used to assist community/groups in reaching goals and resolving their problems (Willingen 2002 ).

In the activist/engaged Anthropology , the researcher is strongly committed to the “tribe” problems. More than to walk alongside the people/communities and give them the anthropological skills to use for resolving their problems (Hale 2001 ; Low and Merry 2010 ), the anthropologists must actively defend—including politically, the interests of the natives in their relationship with the dominant society/group, for example, physical survival, demarcation of the lands, traditional health practices, and preservation of their cultural and religious identities. In the case of religious movements, it is usually the defense of their proselytism, religious practices, and public manifestations.

Trying to conclude this discussion on methodological procedure on religious studies, let me bring one more (and the final) issue: it is not easy to develop studies on religious movements without undergoing a sort of attempt at conversion, indoctrination, and expectations of proselytism; that is, during the time that the researcher is inserted in the group, doing the fieldwork, he/she suffers constant questioning and attempt of conversion. In my fieldwork on evangelical churches, I have heard many times, “when will you be baptized, becoming truly one of us?” (field notes).

Final Considerations

The goal of this paper was to discuss on the main methodological approaches used in Anthropology and Sociology and applied in studies of Latin American religions, particularly the relationship between immigration (diaspora) and evangelical churches, theme that I have been doing ethnographic fieldwork in USA, many countries in the South Europe, and more recently in Asia (Japan and Cambodia).

I emphasized the two principal and general categories of methods, the quantitative and qualitative, which include various types of procedures, such as the case study, interdisciplinary, historical, comparative, and cross-cultural. Specifically, after the classical localized participant-observation, including the “outsider-insider dichotomy,” emerged a new paradigm, the world scale and “glocal” multi-situated ethnography, which is also used by Sociology and Geography. These traditional ethnographic proceeds implied (compelled) the physical presence of the anthropologist in the field. However, today, with new digital technologies and the broad cultural and religious manifestations in the Internet, intensified with the impact of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, the researcher can complement the search for information (ethnographic data)—and accompany of the daily life of the group, of the community under study—using the Internet and the various social networks, namely, Zoom, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

According to the vast bibliography, the religious studies involve a lot of personal difficulties and dilemmas (Blanes 2006 ). Considering that it was not an exhaustive approach, but only some notes on methodology and religion, in my perspective, the principal contribution of this work is to discuss the specificities of the ethnographic field in the context of studies of religious movements, evangelical churches in particular, where issues and problems are posed to researchers, requiring appropriate ethical and methodological procedures for overcoming them: negotiation with gatekeeper, choose the key-informants, characteristics and personal matter, socio-cultural-religious prejudices, axiological neutrality, reciprocity, writing, publication and scrutinization by the native people, activist/applied perspectives, attempts of conversion/indoctrination of the ethnographer, and so on.

It is pertinent to mention that I did not pretend to exhaust the discussion on production of scientific knowledge, nor the diversified strategies of research in Sociology and especially in Anthropology. In fact, considering the complexity of the theme, it is (almost) impossible to exhaust the subject in such a brief work. Based on my field experience, I only wanted to demonstrate the importance of discussing, in the context of empirical production, the necessary epistemological and methodological procedures that must be considered for a correct procedure in scientific work on religious studies.

From a theoretical approach and the formulation/presentation of some important methodological procedures that must be followed in the fieldwork, I intended in this text discuss how the research trajectory is processed, emphasizing some difficulties and problems that the researcher may face during the ethnography and possible solutions. Through this analysis and sharing my experiences, I hope to help young researchers, anthropologists, and sociologists in their difficult and complex task in the study of religion.

Many of these issues and reflections came up in the fruitful academic debate, held in many doctoral seminars that I taught: All Souls College, Oxford University, England (2001); Department of Religion and Content and Methods of the Social Sciences Seminar, Columbia University, New York/USA (2009–2010, 2016); and Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (2018). My sincere thanks to Bryan Wilson†, Peter Clarke†, Courtney Bender, Sidney Greenfield, and Jackie Feldman; their constant encouragement, suggestions, and contributions made this work theoretical and methodologically much better. However, they are not responsible for probable inaccuracies and errors presents in this text.

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Rodrigues, D. How to Study Religion? Notes on Research Methodology in the Context of Latin American Religions. Int J Lat Am Relig 7 , 235–253 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-022-00188-0

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Religious Methodology

What is a methodology in religious studies? Methodologies in religious studies are the interpretive models on which the analysis of religious phenomena and resources are discussed. Methodologies provide a lense of analysis from which to view the field of religous studies. Within religious studies there are three common methodologies : Philosophy of Religion ( Phenomenology ), the study of religious communities ( Functionalism ), and the study of all aspects of the beliefs, practices, and experiences of the followers of a particular religion ( Lived Religion ). There are many subsets within these fields and other methodologies can be used in combination to study a particular faith.

This page provides you with resources on methodology in religious studies.

Methodology Resources: Databases

• Encyclopedia of Religion This link opens in a new window Considered a standard reference in the field. Presents a cross-cultural approach that emphasizes religion's role within everyday life and as a unique experience from culture to culture.
• Gale OneFile Religion and Philosophy This link opens in a new window A subset of Gale OneFile, featuring a selection of more than 250 magazines and academic journals covering religion, philosophy and the related areas of archaeology and anthropology. Traces the impact that religion has had on culture throughout history, including literature, arts, and language. Coverage: 1980-.;"Access provided by the Tennessee State Library & Archives and Tennshare; part of the Tennessee Electronic Library"
• JSTOR This link opens in a new window The JSTOR database consists of complete backfiles of core scholarly journals in all disciplines. Coverage: varies--going back to first year of publication and coming up to 3-5 years ago. See the Project Muse database for scholarly articles from within the past 3-5 years.

Additional Resources

• PewResearch Religion & Public Life Project This link opens in a new window An excellent resource on religion in American life today.
• World Religions & Spirituality Project This link opens in a new window
• The Pluralism Project This link opens in a new window Harvard-sponsored project designed to help Americans engage with the realities of religious diversity through research, outreach, and the active dissemination of resources.
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27 Religious Studies and Religious Practice

Sarah E. Fredericks is an assistant professor of environmental ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She studies sustainability, sustainable energy, environmental guilt and shame, environmental justice, religious environmental ethics, and the relationship of religion and science. Her publications include Measuring and Evaluating Sustainability: Ethics in Sustainability Indexes (2013) and numerous articles and book chapters.

• Published: 06 March 2017
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The academic study of religion uses multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary methods because of the nature of religion and the interaction between religious practice and religious studies. Prior to modernity, the study and practice of religion were integrated and separate disciplines were often assumed to study a unified subject. Thus, the terms “multidisciplinary,” “interdisciplinary,” and “transdisciplinary,” which presume strictly separated disciplines do not apply to this period. In modernity, faith-based claims in the guise of objectivity often characterized the academic study of religion, a position increasingly critiqued by academics in the late twentieth century. Yet, new modes of transdisciplinary work demonstrate how scholarship and religious practice may mutually inform each other. Ecumenical and interfaith initiatives share features with multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research methods and may yield helpful insights for these academic endeavors even though their commitment to an overarching worldview and life in communities set them apart.

The academic study of religion has a diverse subject studied through multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary methods. This multifaceted mode of scholarship is grounded in the diverse nature of religion itself as well as the long history of interaction between religious practice and religious studies.

27.1 Introduction

When discussing religious studies and the practice of religion, one of the first tasks is to clarify what “religion” is. Definitions of religion are frequently debated both in and outside of the academy. While many laypeople think of religion as requiring belief in a god or gods, many academics now recognize that emphasizing belief when trying to define religion distracts from traditions where following the law or rituals are paramount. Similarly, focusing on a god or gods, terms that in English often evoke personal images of a deity, may exclude a number of traditions, for example, Buddhism, that have no such idea. Furthermore, such a definition eschews the community structures and material cultures whose presence (or conspicuous absence in the sense of ascetic groups) is tightly bound to religious belief and practice.

Thus, many contemporary academics favor a description of religion based on a number of dimensions (e.g., doctrines, rituals, ethics, material culture, social organization) that may be more or less present in any particular religion ( Smart 1996 ). Notably, such descriptions of religion fail to draw a hard line between what is and what is not religious, as political groups or particularly ardent groups of sports fans may also all share these characteristics, but the broadness of the definition enables scholars to explore the continuities between a wide variety of human phenomena including groups often deemed “secular.” Such a dimensional analysis also keeps guard against privileging the characteristics of one’s own religion above others as it provokes one to explore the whole phenomena.

In the context of this study of religion and interdisciplinarity, such expansive multifaceted descriptions of religion also point to the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary nature of religious studies as a field. Some scholars are experts in a subset of the various characteristics of religion and may use unique methodologies to study them even as all of the different specialists are studying religion. Ethicists for example, may construct ethical theories or make ethical judgments while studying religious ethics; anthropologists or sociologists may emphasize community structures, material cultures, and rituals as much as or more than beliefs in their surveys, interviews, and observations. Similarly, linguists, textual experts, archeologists, theologians, philosophers of religion, and art historians may have their own content and methodological emphases. Yet all may consider themselves religious studies scholars, serve in departments with each other, and to a greater or lesser extent, use each other’s work to inform their own research and teaching.

To demonstrate the multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity of the study of religion, we should first look to the development of religious studies, the places of secularity and collaboration with religious practitioners in religious studies, and the ways ecumenical and interfaith activities draw on religious studies and parallel interdisciplinarity and modes of transdisciplinarity today. I emphasize the Western (European and North American) context, as this is where religious studies as an academic discipline arose. Contemporary examples of the interaction of religious studies and religious practice will focus on the American context because it is necessary to practically limit the examples, because this is my area of expertise, and because the study of religion in America has been influential on the broader discipline of religious studies.

27.2 Predisciplinary Religious History

Throughout most of human history what is now called “religion” was coterminous with culture. All sorts of actions were ritualized to connect people with each other, the broader world, and the transcendent in one overarching worldview. While shamans, priests, or other religious leaders may have had distinct access to religious knowledge or experience, it was typically understood to be unified with all other knowledge and was studied to develop their religious practice. Thus, the modern view of religious studies as a discipline distinct from both other disciplines and religious adherence is inapplicable to much of history.

Even when distinct academic disciplines arose, it was assumed that their content was connected. For instance, traditional Islamic scholarship was based on explicit metaphysical principles that formed the foundation of all thought ( Nasr 1996 ). This schema linked areas of study including the religious “sciences” of Quranic exegesis, Hadith studies, and jurisprudence as well as other branches of thought including astronomy, alchemy, medicine, and mathematics. (The term “science” is used here in its medieval meaning of a form of knowledge and learning. It does not imply the experimental, law-based potentially reductionistic vision of science popular in the modern world.) One such principle is al-mīzān (balance). Use of this term across the sciences continually reminded scholars of their belief that all knowledge is interconnected even though the term had different connotations in various sciences. Some philosophical schools defined balance as (1) the way “consequences of human action are weighed in the next world,” (2) “the necessity of leading a morally balanced life in this world,” or (3) “the discernment that allows us to establish balance in all aspects of life” ( Nasr 1996 ). It was also used as a physical term in studies of weights, mechanics, and hydrostatics or to indicate that the proper proportion of qualities of nature (hot, cold, moist, dry) was reached ( Nasr 1996 ).

Moving ahead in time to the early modern period and traveling from the Middle East to western Europe, we see that religious ideas often shaped and were shaped by those of other disciples even though the early modern period is often understood as the time when academia was secularized. As John Hedley Brooke points out, many significant advances in early modern science explicitly used theological claims. For instance, after seeking a physical explanation of gravity, Isaac Newton eventually decided that God must be the source of all forces and periodically intervene to keep planets in their orbits ( Brooke 1991 ). The move from allegoric and symbolic to more literal biblical interpretations during the sixteenth century Protestant reformation led natural philosophers to increasingly investigate the world literally— as a series of events that had integrity in and of themselves—not as symbols for something else. Scholars began to study biblical stories, such as the flood story, factually. According to Janet Browne, such research helped spark interest in species development and migration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ( Browne 1983 ).

Such interactions are not, however, limited to analytical realms of religious life. Religious practitioners have, since ancient times, also engaged with, developed, and used knowledge from a variety of disciplines for ritual purposes. Astronomers created calendars in part to determine the proper dates of religious rituals in ancient India, Mesopotamia, Central America, and Egypt. The arts, whether architecture, music, or visual arts, have also often been developed in order to serve religious purposes—to generate awe in sacred spaces, to remind people that everyday objects are sacred, to reinforce beliefs or educate an illiterate population.

Religious concepts, methods, and activities shaped and were shaped by other fields of thought, so stark delineations between the study of religion and other academic disciplines are anachronistic for much of history. Similarly, multi-, inter-, or transdisciplinarity, as defined by Julie Thompson Klein and other contemporary scholars, do not adequately describe the historical examples noted above, because the new terms imply intentional efforts to overcome a separation between the disciplines and between scholarship and religious practice that did not yet exist enough to require a recombination ( Klein , this volume). Medieval Islamic scholars, for instance, did conceive of disciplines with distinct methods and subjects; however, insofar as these disciplines shared terms, a metaphysical foundation, and a commitment to a vision of the unity of knowledge established by God, they also transcended our modern bounds of disciplinarity. Instead, the above examples show that religious scholars and practitioners identified subjects of study that blur the contemporary bounds between scholarship and religious practice and rely on a number of bodies of knowledge and experience that we consider outside of religion today. Nevertheless, these interactions lie at the root of the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary nature of religious studies today.

27.3 Religiosity and Secularity in Religious Studies

With the rise of modernity, the study of religion as a distinct academic discipline disassociated from the practice of religion became an ideal as religious scholars came to adopt one implicit requirement of contemporary disciplines: that the discipline’s knowledge is publically available to anyone who wishes to study it ( Weibe 1999 ). In many disciplines this assumption is so strong that it is rarely discussed. In religious studies, however, it is contentious enough to receive explicit attention. Some scholars maintain that the full meaning of rituals and beliefs or the depth of religious experience can only be understood by believers, adherents, or devotees. Others claim that such privileged knowledge is not necessary to study religion and that it should have no place in the academy. This debate, sometimes framed as one between theology and the social scientific study of religion, has been the most contentious element of the development of religious studies and illustrates one way it is multidisciplinary.

The academic study of religion in the West grew out of faith-based endeavors. After all, for much of human history the people who studied religion were religious leaders—shamans, priests, legal experts, and monks. Most focused on their religion, with some study of the traditions from which they came or with which they interacted. Thus, Buddhists knew about Hinduism, and Jewish, Christian, and Muslims scholars in Medieval Spain studied together. Yet, until the Enlightenment, there was no significant study of religion as a scholarly endeavor divorced from the belief in and practice of a particular religion.

With the Enlightenment and rise of Cartesianism, some Western scholars tried to identify the “essence” of religion. Whether the essence was identified with morality (Immanuel Kant), “the feeling of absolute dependence” (Friedrich Schleiermacher), the “mysterium tremendum” (Rudolf Otto), or “ultimate concern” (Paul Tillich), essence theories persisted well into the twentieth century. Developmental, comparative, and phenomenological approaches arose as competitors to essence theories, yet all of these claims of a general theory of religion were typically grounded in Christianity and prioritized Christian concepts ( Gill 1994 ). Indeed, this cultural context has often led scholars to ignore elements of religion not central to Christianity whether they are oral traditions, sacred land, or the belief in multiple or no deities. Such bias has made it difficult for scholars to understand religious diversity.

In the United States, the prioritization of particular, typically Christian, belief systems in academia was a sign of Christian, and often Protestant, dominance as well as a means for reinforcing this domination throughout society. Well into the nineteenth century, children learned to read using primers infused with Protestant ideals, and most institutions of higher learning in the United States were founded with religious goals ( Gaustad & Schmidt 2002 ). Only in 1962 did the Supreme Court rule that prescribed prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. In 1963, the Court clarified the status of religion in school by separating the practice of religion through prayer or ritualized Bible reading (unconstitutional) from the study of religion (constitutional and encouraged to help children understand history and culture) ( Gaustad & Schmidt 2002 ).

The prioritization of Protestant belief systems and rituals in US history has had implications well beyond education. Many Protestant habits have been adopted by non-Protestant religious groups in order to fit into US society. For example, the Native American Church was incorporated and so named in 1918 in order to gain legal protection for their religious rituals ( Thompson 2005 ). Many Japanese-American Buddhists in the internment camps of World War II adopted new rituals (e.g., English, Christian-style hymns in new prayer books) to become more “American,” that is, more Christian ( Williams 2006 ).

While religious studies scholars are not solely responsible for such societal trends, limited knowledge about religious traditions other than one’s own contributes to prejudice. Seeking to avoid these dangers and the scholarly bias that has come from religiously motivated studies of religion, scholars such as Sam Gill and Donald Weibe argue that religious studies should not require, support, or evaluate religious beliefs and practices. Anyone, they argue, should be able to arrive at the same conclusions when studying religion.

Weibe, like many social scientists of religion, draws on Max Müller’s general goals for the study of religion, including impartiality and critical historical and comparative analysis. He also emphasizes the search for the truth through preexistent facts rather than through the creative development of ideas, as in philosophy and theology ( Weibe 1999 ). William M. Newman’s 1974 study of the first 25 years of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) reveals that over time dialogue between “religious believers” and social scientists who study religion was deemphasized in favor of the social scientific study of religion ( Newman 1974 ). Wiebe would applaud such trends. He writes:

If the academic study of religion wishes to be taken seriously as a contributor to knowledge about our world, it will have to concede the boundaries set by the ideal of scientific knowledge that characterizes the university. It will have to recognize the limits of explanation and theory and be content to explain the subject-matter—and nothing more—rather than show itself a form of political or religious behavior (or an injunction to such action). ( Weibe, 1999 )

Similarly, Sam Gill sees the tendency of religious studies scholars to segregate by religion and the frequency with which they study their own religion as a step away from the academic study of religion. Instead, Gill advocates comparative work and the study of overarching religious questions such as what religion reveals about personhood. Thus, both Gill and Wiebe think that the discipline of religious studies should be a unified endeavor without sectarianism that focuses on explaining religious phenomena, not developing religious ideas ( Weibe 1999 ).

In this view, there is room to investigate traditional religious subjects as well as emerging phenomena such as the growing number of people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” a term that generally implies some commitment to deep meaning and values without dogmatism or rote rituals. Similarly, this paradigm allows the study of other human groups that have religious-like features such as civil religion ( Smart 1996 ). Thus, it can advance the field as a scholarly enterprise while enabling new insights about human phenomena.

Yet Weibe draws too sharp of a line between “objective,” “social scientific” studies of religion and the study of religion for religious reasons. Gill and Weibe’s assumption that a narrow definition of a discipline is necessary and their overreliance on social-scientific guidelines for religious studies causes them to reject significant elements of the field such as the literary, theological, ethical, and philosophical and to overlook the blurring of objective, constructive, and advocacy-based approaches to religious studies that may arise out of a social scientific approach.

In recent decades, the academic study of religion in the United States has shifted toward the study of world religions and away from studying Christianity alone. Faith-based studies of religion are yielding to critical, constructive, comparative approaches involving a variety of methods from multiple disciplines, religions, and cultures. These moves encourage students to “examine and engage religious phenomena, including issues of ethical and social responsibility, from a perspective of cultural inquiry and analysis of both the other and the self” ( Religion Major and Liberal Education Working Group 2007 ). Thus, they are more than an “objective” study of religion but less than indoctrination into a particular religious tradition.

For instance, many religious studies courses now examine a particular theme (journey, death, food, etc.) and culminate in a project in which students develop their own positions on the subject. A course on death and dying may finish with a student project to articulate their wishes for the end of their life and explain the meaning behind such choices. Such activities do not presume that students belong to any particular religious tradition, or even a religion at all, but rather enable students to explore questions of deep meaning and value regarding a common experience of humanity.

Outside of the classroom, religious studies scholars may interact with religious communities in a variety of ways beyond the historical relationship in which a scholar developed ideas for his or her own religious community. Anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and other social scientists may find their work being used by religious groups whether or not they meant for this to happen. For instance, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s Religious Landscape Survey may help religious bodies understand their current or potential members ( Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2008 ). The report notes such facts as young Latter-Day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses leaving their religions at greater rates than young people of other religions. This knowledge, combined with the growing numbers of people, especially the young, who claim no religious affiliation may lead religious groups to emphasize youth in their outreach ministries.

Transdisciplinary work often involves religion studies and other scholars, religious people, and nonreligious people working together to address problems facing communities. For example, the Commission on Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ (UCC) took a social scientific approach to chronicle the correlation between the location of toxic waste storage units and the racial composition of neighborhoods in the United States (Commission for Racial Justice United Church of Christ 1987). This work, while motivated by the UCC’s concerns for justice and care for all people, was not framed as a religious document— indeed aside from noting the authorship of the study, religion was not mentioned in it. Yet the study’s significance was felt far beyond the UCC community as it helped catalyze the environmental justice movement both as a social movement and as a field of academic study. Indeed, the environmental and civil rights movements are often transdisciplinary movements composed of scholars, including religious studies scholars, and religious and secular activists. Scholars have often helped articulate or uncover ethical or theological reasons to support the movement and provide historical and sociological support for the movement. Religious leaders, whether preachers, community organizers, musicians, or laypeople provide leadership, organizational knowledge, finances, and physical resources, often including a place to meet. Religious studies scholars also contribute to these movements by documenting their experiences so that the groups in question and others can learn from their experiences. For instance, Laurel Kearns’s work on religious environmentalism, particularly lobbying in Congress to save the Endangered Species Act, has shown the types of coalitions that have been successful, information helpful for future religious or secular advocates ( Kearns 1997 ).

Gill, Weibe, and others would most likely find such new forms of explicit or implicit collaboration between religious studies scholars and religious people troublesome, for it threatens to blur the line between pure objective research and religious practice and may spark memories of past proselytizing. Such research is a new chapter in religious studies scholarship that aims to illuminate religious themes and articulate ethics of religions for use by religious activists in the tradition in question, or to foster ecumenical or interfaith or religious–secular alliances as people seek to understand their neighbors, potential collaborative partners, or opponents better. This collaborative work, however, is a form of transdisciplinarity—when scholarship helps address questions of the broader public and is put to use by them. When such partnerships are not just about scholars or religious leaders foisting their ideas on others, but are actually about working together to solve problems, then we see more of a transdisciplinary model rather than old models of dominance. Yet the debate over whether religious studies should be theological, social scientific, or a new critical, constructive, intercultural, and maybe transdisciplinary method of inquiry is unlikely to be resolved in the near future, given the serious concerns many scholars have about collaboration with religious people. This ongoing diversity within the field of religious studies demonstrates another way in which religious studies is inherently multidisciplinary with respect to method and aims.

27.4 Interfaith and Ecumenical Parallels with Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary Work

Within the realm of religious practice, patterns of engagement and blurring boundaries found in the ecumenical and interfaith movements parallel interdisciplinarity in the academic world. These activities between different denominations of one tradition (ecumenical) or between different religious traditions (interfaith) aim to develop rigorous concepts of religious similarities and differences, promote peace and other social goals, and encourage proper relationships between religions. Ecumenical work may also advocate unity in the religion at large and may lead to mergers or blurred boundaries between denominations. Several types of inter- and intrareligious activity illustrates these trends: ecumenical organizations involving a wide number of religions (the Parliament of the World’s Religions) or denominations (the World Council of Churches); interfaith movements arising out of conflict (Post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian dialogues or Islamic-Christian dialogues after 9-11), curiosity (Buddhist-Christian study in the United States), or concern about social problems (interfaith environmental movements).

Many parallels exist between these ecumenical and interfaith activities and interdisciplinary work. First, there are similarities between the structure of a denomination or religion and a discipline. Like disciplines, religious groups have some defined subject (e.g., the Ultimate, the human condition, myths), rely on epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical presuppositions, and have favored methods. These elements change over time to meet the needs of their religious communities as they interact with similar segments of other religious traditions. Despite differences in subject, presuppositions, and method, people involved in ecumenical or interfaith movements work across religious boundaries to address questions unsolvable by any one tradition: How do and should theologies, rituals, ethics, and histories relate? How should people within a tradition conceive of and relate to others? How can religions address social problems together? As ecumenical and interfaith activities rely on resources of various religious groups to address these issues, they are, in a sense, involved in interdisciplinary work. All of the challenges of interdisciplinarity arise here as well: the communication barriers between groups with different terms, methods, and presuppositions; the suspicion and distrust of groups different from one’s own; and the potential for one group to dominate the activity.

Mircea Eliade warns that as much as other disciplines can aid understanding of religion, they cannot fully describe religion because they do not have the terms to appreciate and understand the sacred, thus the study of religion is a specialized field ( Eliade 1996 ). Extending his argument, completely subsuming ecumenical and interfaith activities under the heading of interdisciplinarity will threaten to impoverish our understanding of religious activity. Certainly religious activity and the activity of academic disciplines have much in common, but the scope of a discipline is much narrower than the scope of religious worldviews. Disciplines, especially in our modern world, focus on narrow segments of or limited approaches to reality, while religion typically involves ideas about the human condition, ultimate reality, and the relationship of these to the world. A discipline may have a code of ethics, but its norms focus on behavior related to the discipline and are not sufficient to guide one’s entire life, whereas religious norms typically aim to guide an adherent’s entire life. These contrasts between disciplines and religions are just a few indications that religions are deeper and wider and involve more commitment than disciplines. Thus, if our understanding of ecumenical and interfaith interactions were reduced to interdisciplinarity, we would miss significant facets of these movements. It would be better to think of ecumenical and interfaith initiatives as a combination of the intellectual endeavors of interdisciplinarity and the engagement of communities of transdisciplinarity.

Despite the dangers of limiting our knowledge of religion by overusing the language of interdisciplinarity, using its various terms may help identify and understand the various ways religious groups interact, since religious studies has not defined terms for all of the types of relationships and goals of inter- and intrareligious dialogue and action.

The first major modern interfaith endeavor was the 1893 Parliament of World’s Religions, held in Chicago. A part of the cultural counterpart to the technical-focused World Columbian Exposition, the Parliament aimed to promote cross-cultural understanding through religions. The Parliament was dominated by Christians both in sheer numbers and in terms of groups underrepresented (Africans, South Americans, Indigenous traditions), by the groups not invited (Mormons, African Americans, Native Americans), and those groups not present (Muslims, Sikhs, and Tibetan Buddhists). The Parliament was successful insofar as it enabled Asian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism to formally introduce themselves to the West and as it promoted understanding among Christians ( Kuschel 1993 ). The Parliament of 1893 is a prime example of multidisciplinary encounter; religious people wanted to learn about each other but did not aim to collaborate or integrate their ideas.

The centennial celebration of the Parliament in 1993 had a different aim: to articulate the global ethics already found in the world’s religions. It expressly did not seek to establish a universal religion or obliterate the religious ethics of individual religious tradition. Rather it sought to identify common ethics (the golden rule; do not lie, steal, kill, or commit sexual immorality) necessary for a world with increasingly global structures of economics, politics, and society. With much more diversity than the first Parliament—with 6,500 representatives from nearly all world religions (evangelical and fundamentalist Christians were notably absent)—it has been praised for its movement toward a global ethic even as elements of its process and content have been criticized. This event illustrates one facet of much interreligious and ecumenical work: the discovery of existing commonalities between groups that can be the basis of future study, collaboration, and peace even as participants recognize and affirm the differences between their traditions.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), organized in 1948, has exhibited similar trends within Christianity. It is the largest ecumenical organization within Christianity, with over 300 member churches comprising over 500 million individual members from over 120 countries. “Church” is often equated with a local congregation, but can also indicate an organizational body that unites many individual congregations, often according to theological, ritual, and regional or national ties. Churches in the WCC include, among others, many Orthodox churches, Anglicans, and Protestant churches including Lutheran, Methodist, and Baptist churches.

The WCC aims to recognize and reinforce the significant common beliefs among Christians through worship and action. It does not intend to be a monolithic church body where all differences are wiped away. The WCC’s decisions are not binding on its members. Rather, its activities are supposed to enable debate and prophesy through which members will be challenged to live lives of faith and service. The WCC’s activities often involve theological, ritual, and ethical innovations, as experimentation is possible within its nonbinding format. Since these actions aim to resolve religious problems about ecumenical worship and social problems about war, economics, racism, environmental degradation, and human rights while transcending denominational boundaries without seeking to obliterate all difference, the WCC members are operating in a parallel to elements of transdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity.

Cooperative study and reconciliation is not, however, limited to ecumenical discussions. For example, the scholarly study of and community reflection on Jewish–Christian relationships has grown considerably since World War II. Many factors led to this interfaith work, including the horrors of the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, the ecumenical movement, the Second Vatican Council, and enlightenment visions of human dignity and equality ( Kessler 2006 ).

Insofar as these dialogues aim to articulate constructive new relationships, they engage in activity similar to critical interdisciplinarians who study the relationship of knowledge between fields. As Jews and Christians collaborate to promote peace, a goal many argue cannot be achieved by either group alone, their activities parallel instrumental interdisciplinarity. Yet interdisciplinarity, whether critical or instrumental, does not quite fit this situation, because each religion intends to remain distinct even as they learn from each other. Thus, there will be barriers to the amount of integration either group is willing to entertain.

Muslims and Christians have recently begun similar dialogues. On September 13, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave an address that was widely regarded as implying that Islam was violent and immoral. In the wake of this address, Islamic leaders and scholars wrote an open letter to the pope to discuss their faith and promote understanding of Islam. The next year 138 Muslim leaders from all branches of Islam and all major Islamic nations and regions released A Common Word between Us and You . This document brought Muslims together in a way not experienced since the time of the Prophet Mohammed. Through this document, and a series of conferences in 2008 with hundreds of Catholics, Anglicans, and Protestants in turn, Muslim leaders hoped to promote understanding of what the faiths share and to promote peace. Importantly, participants in the conferences did not intend to (1) convert each other, (2) make the other adopt ideas of their own theology, or (3) reduce the two religions to a common denominator or new religion. Rather, the document looked to the sacred texts of the Bible and Quran to discover what Christianity and Islam have in common in order to begin to work for peace ( Volf 2009 ).

In contrast, Buddhist–Christian dialogue in the United States has primarily been an academic affair, in which scholars expert in each of these traditions have studied the major ideas of Buddhism and Christianity in a comparative fashion ( Lai & Von Brück 2001 ). (Buddhist–Christian dialogue in countries with significant Buddhist populations has spent more time on the social implications of contact between the religions and has involved religious communities and scholars.) Studies cover a wide range of topics, but issues of ultimate reality; meditation, contemplation, and prayer; suffering; and ethics have been most popular, as is demonstrated in the Journal for Buddhist–Christian Studies. “Multidisciplinarity” describes some of these endeavors, as scholars study the same phenomenon sequentially using different theories or use the same theory to explore different phenomenon. Buddhist–Christian dialogue, however, is more often interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary, as it aims to integrate insights from various religious traditions and academic disciplines. Though most of the comparative work between Buddhism and Christianity in North America has occurred within academic circles rather than in religious communities, this does not mean there is a clear distinction between academics and religious practice in Buddhist–Christian studies. Many scholars engaged in this dialogue are themselves Buddhists, Christians, or adherents of some beliefs and practices from each system. These scholars engage in dialogue in part to develop their own religious ideas, a form of transdisciplinary endeavor.

People of different religions also come together to resolve pressing social issues that do not directly stem from their religious differences, a type of collaboration that can be classified as instrumental interdisciplinarity as groups rely on their various methods and beliefs to reach a common goal. For example, various faith communities collaborate to promote environmental protection. The Evangelical Environmental Network and the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a group of mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, campaigned to save the Endangered Species Act in the 104th Congress ( Kearns 1997 ). Interfaith Power and Light organizations located in most states also educate religious communities about how to simultaneously save energy, money, and the planet; band together to purchase cheaper energy; and provide a support network to help achieve such changes.

Though interfaith and ecumenical activities should be distinguished from interdisciplinarity because of their connection to religious belief and practice, there are enough parallels between them that scholars engaged in interdisciplinary endeavors can learn from these activities. First, they could learn of the dangers, both to understanding and to interpersonal relationships, of evaluating other disciplines with the criteria of one’s own and calling it a dialogue. One does not need to look far to find prejudicial (intentional or inadvertent) descriptions of religious traditions unfamiliar to the adherent or scholar. For instance, Christians have long ignored the importance of land to Native Americans. Second, ecumenical and interfaith activities may teach interdisciplinarians about forging terms that resonate with multiple perspectives to avoid privileging or ignoring one viewpoint. For example, “Ultimate Realities” or “Ultimate Reality” are terms used to avoid the limitations of “God” language. Third, interdisciplinarians could learn something about how to link communities that not only have different methods, assumptions, and subjects but also experience deep distrust or animosity toward the other based on centuries of prejudice, persecution, and power imbalances. Working to resolve practical problems about the environment, peace, and other social issues can often be a starting point to deeper collaboration. Academics may find that working to address community issues can build bridges between hostile disciplines. For all of these reasons, interdisciplinarians would do well to learn from the experience of the ecumenical and interfaith movements.

27.5 Conclusion

Though “multidisciplinarity,” “interdisciplinarity,” and “transdisciplinarity” should not replace terms like “ecumenism” and “interfaith,” something like the integrated results of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity has long been a facet of religious study and practice. Religion is a subject that predates the rise of modern disciplines and has often been seen as connected to all modes of thought and experience. Indeed, scholars have often connected what we today divide into the “secular” and “religious.” We see this inter- and transdisciplinarity today as religious practitioners use ideas and methods from art, psychology, history, languages, and the sciences. As scholars study these diverse phenomena they often form subdisciplines of the academic study of religion, which may relate to each other or to other disciplines in multi- or interdisciplinary ways. Of course, this diversity has and does lead to quarrels about the proper ways to study religion. The benefits of such diverse modes of study and practice, if done well, outweigh the costs. Multifaceted scholarship about religion enables scholars to acknowledge the complexities of religion itself. Transdisciplinary religious practice keeps religion relevant to the intellectual and practical concerns of its people. In a fitting move given the history of religious studies, religious studies scholars are forging a new path between the extremes of objectivity and proselytism to encourage description and critical reflection so that religious studies becomes an openly interdisciplinary discipline and so religious practitioners can benefit from such knowledge and experience.

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University of southern california, center for religion and civic culture, studying faith: qualitative methodologies for studying religious communities.

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Tools Studying Faith: Qualitative Methodologies for Studying Religious Communities

Nalika gajaweera and andrew johnson, introduction.

Religion is a fundamental part of human experience and is deeply concerned with questions of “making sense” and “meaning” of our world and our existence. It constitutes the symbols, historical narratives and cosmologies that make the meaning of life or the cosmos intelligible. Religion is not only personal, but also social. It plays a crucial role in contemporary society and politics. The domain of the sacred interacts in diverse ways with institutions of power, gender norms, historical change, the economy and other aspects of society.

Despite the significance and pervasiveness of religion in society, and because it spans across so many different realms of human experience, it can be a challenge to define what we mean when we speak of “religion.” For example, though the notion of “belief” is a fundamental part of Protestant Christianity, it is of less relevance to tribal religions, and is considered by Buddhists to be a impediment to the realization of Buddhist descriptions of reality. Definitions notwithstanding, religious worlds are vivid, meaningful and true to those who construct and inhabit them. By studying religion, we discover the value and power of those worlds.

So how does one study religion? A straightforward answer is to read and study the sacred texts of a particular faith. There are thousands of seminaries around the world devoted to the study of the Koran, Bible and Torah. Others study at a Buddhist monastery or Hindu Temple. Another option is to study religion from an academic perspective. Topics are as diverse as the history of Catholic Church in 19 th century Paraguayan politics, artistic representations of the Hindu deity Varuna or the architecture of mosques in Cairo. While all of these examples are wonderful ways to study religion, this handbook will teach you how to study religious groups from the perspective of a social scientist.

Studying religion from such a perspective is a critical exercise of interrogating the familiar and encountering the other. By studying religion, we may discover new forms of religious experience evolving in the contexts of a globalizing world. We may gain insights into how people negotiate and adapt to these changes. By investigating religion, we also find that contrary to the prophecy that religion is on its way out, religion is, in fact, on the rise and emergent everywhere. We may discover the sacred in the most unexpected places and times.

We hope that this resource serves as a handbook or “how to” guide for students interested in studying religious groups from the perspective of a social scientist using qualitative research methodologies. It will help you decide what group or groups to study, how to study them, which people to talk to once you arrive and how to analyze the data you collect. You will not be able to learn everything there is to know about conducting research on religious groups, but this resource should give you enough to get out and start collecting data. You will learn many more lessons in the field.

How to use this manual

The material in these pages is organized as a set of 17 frequently asked questions (FAQs) about how to apply social scientific methodologies to studying faith and religion. You can access short reading materials and watch videos related to the question by clicking on any of the FAQs in the menu (see right-hand sidebar on a desktop computer or below on a phone). You can also read through the report by clicking on “next in the report” at the bottom of the page.

You have the choice to read the material in sequence like a series of book chapters, or you can jump to the questions that you find most relevant. Be sure to also click on any of the questions to the right to explore a topic more fully.

Nalika Gajaweera was a senior research analyst with the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture through 2023.

Andrew Johnson is a contributing fellow with the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

What methodologies can I use to study religious groups?

• Is it possible to study religion objectively?
• What are the guidelines for objective, reliable and valid research?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of studying my own religion?
• How do you choose and gain access to a field site?
• Why should I use interviews in my research?
• Whom should I interview?
• How do I prepare for an interview?
• What are typical interview questions?
• What are some techniques and strategies for interviewing?
• How do I analyze my interview data?
• What is “participant observation”?
• What data do you collect in participant observation?
• What are the ethical considerations of fieldwork?
• How do I apply social science theoretical frameworks to make sense of my data?
• How might a journalist and a social scientist approach religion differently?
• How do I take good photography, video or audio in the field?
• What research can be done during the COVID-19 pandemic?
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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH METHODS IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION

2011, Routledge

This is the fi rst comprehensive survey in English of research methods in the fi eld of religious studies. It is designed to enable non-specialists and students at upper undergraduate and graduate levels to understand the variety of research methods used in the fi eld. The aim is to create awareness of the relevant methods currently available and to stimulate an active interest in exploring unfamiliar methods, encouraging their use in research and enabling students and scholars to evaluate academic work with reference to methodological issues. A distinguished team of contributors cover a broad spectrum of topics, from research ethics, hermeneutics and interviewing, to Internet research and video-analysis. Each chapter covers practical issues and challenges, the theoretical basis of the respective method, and the way it has been used in religious studies (illustrated by case studies).

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This short writing contains the contents of a Zoom webinar presentation. It was prepared exclusively to address the problem of the choice of research methods among the writers of various Islamic backgrounds. Although it is not a detailed work and only outlines some of the areas of methodological research in Religious Studies, it is still a fine document for a quick insight into this important subject.

Studia Humana

Despite development of secular ideas and concepts in the Western world, we can observe increasing interest in the study of religion. However, this popularity of the study of religion and different research approaches has caused that in some sense scholars that were studying religion came to a dead point. Here I show that the most optimal research approach in the study of religion is pluralistic, integral paradigm which connects old traditional methods with naturalistic, cognitive and sometimes experimental approach.

Ipsita Chatterjea

"Methodologies and Analytical Study of Religion SBL and AAR SORAAAD Pre-Conference workshop Baltimore, Maryland Friday, November 22, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. In its third year, SORAAAD will address a long over due need to focus on the methodologies with which the field observes and analyzes the range of activity that falls loosely within or overlaps with religious experiences or things deemed special and social responses to and conflicts regarding things designated sacred. 1 SORAAAD will focus on the selection, design, and implementation of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, as well as responsible ways to use quantitative and qualitative research generated by other scholars outside of the study of religion. SORAAAD’s Methodologies and the Analytical Study of Religion will be of particular interest for graduate students and established scholars who already enact social science and critical humanities research methodologies, who want to implement newer or different methodologies, or who need to integrate existing social science and critical humanities research outside of religion (Sociology, Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Critical and Social Theories) into their research design, data acquisition and analysis. Part One: Methodologies and the Study of Religion will address the implementation of particular methodologies and techniques: Discourse Analysis, Free Listing, Structured Observation, Ethnography and Grounded Theory. Our speakers will include Steven Engler, Kocku von Stuckrad, Michael Stausberg and Jens Kreinath. Part Two: Interdisciplinary Religious Research: Design, Implementation, and Collaboration will highlight the experience of integrating work on religion with social scientific methodologies such as fields experiments, GIS network analysis, cognitive science and Ethnography. With remarks from Ann Taves, our speakers will include: John Thibdeau, Michael Kinsella and Philip Deslippe The suggested readings for each segment of the SORAAAD workshop will be, along with the presentations, the basis for discussion during each part of the workshop. Further readings are grounding points of reference for scholars new to a methodology or technique. "

James A Benn

This departmental seminar is required of all incoming students and offers a forum for the discussion of issues central to the field of Religious Studies. This year, there will be two sections, one taught by myself and the other by Dr Anders Runesson. Since Religious Studies might best be considered a field rather than a discipline, its theories, methods and issues can be extremely diverse. In the seminar we will consider the following questions from a variety of perspectives: What do we think we are studying when we study religions? Why do we think this is a worthwhile endeavour? How do we study religions?

Fieldwork in Religion, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2021

Carole Cusack , Rachelle Scott

The first issue of Fieldwork in Religion for 2021 contains five articles on a variety of methodological considerations and fieldwork contexts that are of interest to researches in the field of religious studies.

Fieldwork in Religion

Myfanwy Franks

Markus Altena Davidsen

Tools and Theories is about transforming theory into concrete analytical tools that can help us study stuff and solve research problems. Concretely, students are introduced to a range of tools for analysing religious narratives and discourses, religious thinking and belief, as well as religious traditions and fields. These tools are drawn from a wide range of humanistic and social-scientific disciplines, including literary studies, cognitive science, sociology, and history. We discuss the theoretical foundation of the analytical tools we work with and, more importantly, we practice how to actually use these tools to analyse concrete empirical material. In this way, we constantly evaluate the usefulness of our tools and reflect on the research problems that each of them can help us solve. In two 'Tools assignments' students work out research designs that involve using tools from the course to analyse primary material in order to solve research problems in the study of religion. During the last part of the course, students carry out the research sketched in one of the tools assignments and rapport their findings in a final paper.

Russell T . McCutcheon

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• Methodological Pluralism in the Study of Religion An article about how "How the Study of Consciousness and Mapping Spiritual Experiences Can Reshape Religious Methodology."
• Studying Religion: Concepts, Methods and Dilemmas Th author notes that " My paper aims at addressing some of the problems and challenges facedby the study of religion(s) and at presenting briefly the academic contextof that study. "
• Why Study Religon A listing of the many sources that can be used in the study of religion.
• Study of Religion Britannica Encyclopedia Article "Study of religion, attempt to understand the various aspects of religion, especially through the use of other intellectual disciplines "
• Why do we need Religious Studies? " Religion is everywhere. It does matter. "
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• Last Updated: Jan 24, 2023 9:17 PM
• URL: https://research.auctr.edu/religiousstudies

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Digital Humanities and Research Methods in Religious Studies

An introduction.

• Edited by: Christopher D. Cantwell and Kristian Petersen
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Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.

• Language: English
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Copyright year: 2021
• Audience: Scholars interested in the fields of religious studies, buddihst studies, digital humanites
• Front matter: 19
• Main content: 341
• Illustrations: 9
• Coloured Illustrations: 57
• Keywords: Digital technology ; research tools
• Published: February 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9783110573022
• ISBN: 9783110571608

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .