Professional Documents
Culture Documents
imagine their roles as public intellectuals, both within and beyond the academy. According to
McCutcheon, the role of religious studies scholars is to study “the complex, observable behavior
of biologically, socially, and historically situated human beings and human communities that
talk, act, and organize themselves in ways that the scholar finds curious and in need of analysis”
(11). Furthermore, these behaviors require analysis because they “authorize, normalize, and
homogenize what are in fact divergent and highly contestable ‘experiences’ of the world in
which we live” (8). McCutcheon thinks it is the scholar’s role as a public intellectual both to
redescribe “religions” as social processes, and to encourage students to identify and challenge
their own unquestioned ideas. In his redescription of public study of religion, McCutcheon
criticizes the scholarship of “caretakers” like Diana Eck and Mircea Eliade, and wants to replace
them in the academy. Instead, he thinks critics (also known a “culture critics,” “anthropologist of
credibility,” or “social provocateurs) should serve as public intellectuals because they challenge
the authority and credibility of caretakers. While I have some reservations with the way
McCutcheon seems to privilege theoretical constructs and methodological approaches that lack
any relation to something invisible “in here” or “out there,” I fully support his call for a more
by the amount of existing scholarship that fails to incorporate redescriptive analysis into
phenomenological research. In his words, “there should be a why to accompany our current
abundance of phenomenological research into the how, where, when, and who of religion” (174).
He thinks that in order to do this, the scholar must redescribe absolute values and mystical ideals
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in localized, historical terms. It makes no difference to McCutcheon whether these values and
ideals actually exist, because according to him, “all we know for sure is that we think them up
for specific reasons and purposes” (78). The scholar’s job is not to “caretake” religions by
pondering their meaning and value. Instead, it is the scholar’s job to study how these values
function and identify sites where humans create continuity amidst the discontinuities of life,
which they do by explaining the historical, economic, psychological, and sociological causes of
these sites (166). He thinks the work of scholars “is not intended to celebrate or enhance
normative, dehistoricized discourses, but rather, to contextualize and redescribe them as human
constructs” (139). In other words, critics localize and demystify religious sites and behavior by
While McCutcheon might agree that all religious systems deserve historical
power and privilege when he describes the academic study of religion as a “metatheoretical
activity” that “critique[s] the model builders and sign makers for being so bold as to think that…
their maps are adequate representations of actual territory” (24, 61). For him, any and all claims
to knowledge are contextual by nature, so scholars of religion study those who fail to set
contextual limits on their knowledge claims (227). In doing so, the critic challenges
unsubstantiated claims for authority and authenticity that power structures make. However, the
role of the critic extends beyond the mere policing of power structure. It can also function more
pragmatically by “deciding whether and to what extent religious positions that claim ahistorical
authority, wisdom, and direction are useful in charting the course of a public school curriculum,
a welfare agency, or even a policy for war” (131). In these situations, the critic assists in
element in McCutcheon’s redescription of the public study of religion. He says that unlike
absolute claims, theories are “constructed models of reality that are not to be mistaken for reality
itself … [and] that have yet to be thrown away” (112). Furthermore, theories “are constructed, ad
hoc models that can never be in a one-to-one fit with reality but that, instead, have a tactical
utility in some given situations,” and so “there is, by definition, no such beast as a final or grand
theory of any- or everything” (114). Because absolute claims present themselves as self-
evidently meaningful without offering explicit and defensible theoretical concerns, the critic
cannot accept these claims as scholarship. Instead, absolute claims become part of the data set
that the he or she studies (229). Likewise, by assuming “religion provides deep, essential,
absolute or otherworldly insights into the very nature of things,” McCutcheon thinks many
scholars misguidedly hope that their work “provides normative guidance for a society” (129).
When it comes to academic scholarship, he does not necessarily find that normative statements
are problematic—just when they are based on “the unquestioned acceptance of deep, essential
truths” (129). This bears repeating: McCutcheon does not abhor all normative statements, but
only those that blindly accept absolute claims because he thinks they misguide and distort reality.
Nor does he demand that we abandon our own normative convictions. “In fact,” he admits,
“given the centrality of using rhetorical, ideological, and normative claims and strategies in
constructing and sanctioning the social and political models we live by and within, it would be
naïve to think that these sorts of claims would ever disappear” (138). However, because of the
tenuous nature of normative reflection, McCutcheon wants scholars to avoid comments on how
the world ought to work, and instead to explain “how and why it happens to work as it does”
(135). Unlike a caretaker, whose work simply repeats or translates religious claims uncritically
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when they make “pronouncements on the future of human meaning, the nation, or the world,” the
critic is not preoccupied by the need to tell others how to live their lives or how to achieve
happiness (139, 135). Instead, the critic wants to explain in her terms how others live their lives
and imagine happiness. By “trying to understand human behavior based on theories and models”
of their own making, McCutcheon thinks critics are capable of taking a “theoretical leap” and
separating themselves from the religious devotees they study and who “do not wear their
intentions and meaning on their sleeves” (197). Consequently, critics are uniquely equipped to
challenge absolute claims and resist the temptation to sacrifice theoretical stability (and therefore
credibility) for the sake of universal ideals such as “tolerance” and “pluralism.”
Finally, the critic is also a public intellectual, which means the scholar must not hoard his
or her theoretical bounty from the public. Instead, the critic-as-public intellectual must reach out
and encourage others to apply their own critical intelligence to the world in which they live.
McCutcheon thinks one of the best ways to achieve this is through teaching, and he has
undergraduate classes specifically in mind. However, McCutcheon also thinks the classroom in
its present state is “the place where we often fail to live up to our responsibility of educating
critical thinkers and future scholars, and, instead, where we often act as trustees concerned for
the general well-being of religion” (66). Rather than encouraging students “to find curiosity in
what they take to be self-evident and, thereby, to make themselves and the wider communities to
which they belong data in need of analysis,” he says many religious studies courses are designed
to reproduce “common sense” and “make students feel good about themselves” (169, 66). As
with the analysis of caretaker scholars, he criticizes religious studies courses that forego
provocative critical analysis for the sake of tolerance and appreciation. Conversely, the critic
uses the classroom to provoke “unreflective participants in social systems into becoming
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reflective scholars of social systems,” and to cultivate, not good citizens or good people, but
rather good scholars (170). Even if our goal is to cultivate good people, he suggests that teaching
students how to challenge unquestioned truths is more practical than to teach them how to
tolerate others. Because there is no such thing as an absolute claim or grand totalizing narrative,
and because normative reflections are often misguided attempts to achieve privilege and
authority, students who practice tolerate instead of criticism might find themselves empathizing
with distorted representations of reality. Therefore, McCutcheon redescribes the role scholars in
the public study of religion “not simply as helping students to understand and appreciate…but
instead as providing our students with critical thinking, debating, and writing skills upon which
they will draw long after they have left our classes” (217). More simply put, he thinks he is
teaching his students how to fish instead just giving them food.
My initial aversion to McCutcheon stems from the fact that he challenged my own
unquestioned and unsubstantiated belief that anyone (let alone I) has the authority or ability to
improve the lives of others by teaching them about world religions. I recognize now that the role
students with my own liberal democratic ideology. The pedagogy that McCutcheon offers in
Critics Not Caretakers may prove especially useful if I decide once again to pursue a career in
demystified my reality that I am not so sure I still have a place in the academic study of religion.
I can handle challenging unquestioned truths; I will have more difficulty taming the “caretaker”
inside me long enough to take the theoretical leaps that require me to turn away from the magic.
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Works Cited
McCutcheon, Russell T. Critics, Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion.