Leaving The Study Of Religion To Religious People

Leaving the Study of Religion to Religious People Assuming that "religion" here has the same meaning as one of the definitions referred to in O U Block 4 Unit 14 (and in particular is an activity caught by Ninian Smart's The Nature of Religion, A5 Resource Book 3) we still need to know what is meant by "religious people" before we can properly answer the question posed for this essay. By "religious people", presumably the question is not referring to theologians but ordinary people who follow a particular religion. If that is the case then it is felt that the study of religion should be left to religious people. However, this is not without its problems. One of the problems in leaving the study of religion to religious people

Can such study be left to a person (i.e. a non religious person) who has no faith in anybody or anything but himself? I think not. This line of thought is following the argument that because religion can be said to be a "totally distinct and unique category of human experience" it is "beyond the comprehension of those who have not felt this experience directly". This is put most succinctly by Otto when he says:- The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further; [my italics] for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who cannot recollect the emotions of his adolescence, the discomforts of indigestion, or, say, social feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious