Secular Bias In The Study Of Religion Summary

Is secularization another form of confessional history?

In the article The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in The Study of Religion by Brad S. Gregory, Gregory discusses the ongoing secularity and secularization happening in the study of religion. He discusses religion within social sciences, whether or not religious events from the past are real or not based on the metaphysical naturalism of the said event, religion in relations to epistemological skepticism, and just plain secularization. After having read the article, it has lead me to believe that secularization really is another form of confessional history. The definition of confessional history, to my understanding, is “to write history from a religiously biased point of view” in such a way that it hinders the full capacity and full understanding of the historical event’s content. In this case, the secularization of religious events fits the definition as it takes away from the historical content of the history itself. Gregory discusses secularization in his article and

makes various points that lead to the idea of secularization being like or being another form of confessional history.
As Gregory states in the article, “the adoption of secular theories that overtly or tacitly explain religion by reducing it to something else would constitute a form of confessional history – a secular confessional history” which speaks for itself. The example of the September 11, 2001 attack in another one of Gregory’s articles called Can We “See Things Their Way”? Should we Try? speaks about the radical and militant Islam attack that happened in New York. If we look at these events as outsiders or from a secular standpoint, there is a huge bias from said standpoints on how people look at Islam, which continues on today. From a secular point of view, people see Islam as a “terrorist religion” and make that biased assumption based on that one unfortunate event which involved radical Muslims, which has lead to the ostracizing of Muslims in many countries, buildings, and other similar places, 15 years later, and continue to make assumptions and “secular theories” on the people of the Islam faith.
Gregory also talks about recent historians of Reformation-era Christianity and how they have turned to social sciences, be it psychology, sociology, and so forth, in order to come to a conclusion on the topic of religion. He states that “[…] the results yield differently biased accounts that reflect the secular assumptions underpinning the theories” in which secularization does reflect confessional history. By trying to figure out a religion or religious ideas through a social science standpoint results in a completely biased and secular assumption of that religion. Gregory uses Clifford Geertz’s analysis on religion from an anthropological standpoint, where he claims that religion can be reducible to symbols and that a religion is just a system of symbols. Symbols do not equal the religion itself, where for example, in the Christian faith, the cross is the symbol of Christianity but the religion is not centered around the cross, nor does it get its values, customs, and such from the cross, but from Jesus and the words he spoke.
Gregory then talks about metaphysical naturalism which is “a notion which holds that there is nothing but the natural elements, principles, and connections of the kind studied by natural sciences” meaning that everything must be explainable by natural science and natural occurrences.

He explains that historians who follow this claim dogmatically, believe that “no religion is, indeed cannot be, what its believer-practitioners claim that it is” despite the fact that miracles are “not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency” and such miracles are often those that occur within different religions. To try and explain miracles with natural sciences would be impossible due to its nature being of a divine creator because we cannot explain nor describe the divine power of God. An example being in Christianity, how Mary conceived a child through the power of the Holy

Spirit.
In summary, Gregory makes very fine points on the different theories and ways of the secularization of history in religion. To sum up the argument and validate the point that secularization is confessional history, Gregory states that “to understand religion means to contextualize it as fully as possible, not to create for it an unreal insularity, as if it were untouched by the rest of life”. In the different ways that he summarizes each theory, it is clear that his argument answers the question “is secularization another form of confessional history?” in which the answer is “yes” thanks to the explanations and examples given in the article.