Last week Raymond McInnis, a columnist for Daily News Online, responded to a Revealer post by asking: “Why, currently, do I –as a secular humanist — need to become conversant in theology to understand the current political rhetoric of America?” It’s a fair and important question, as is McInnis’s reaction–“Somebody else is writing the rules, and I don’t like that.” In this past week’sVillage Voice, Tedra Meyer poses, and answers, the same question:

“Fundamentalist suicide bombers, pedophilic priests, same-sex marriages, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ—if religion’s an appendix, it’s one on the verge of rupturing and causing havoc on the rest of the body politic. ..There’s no avoiding it, whether you’re deeply devout or have never set foot in a temple.”

In essence because, like it or not, it’s there. We couldn’t agree more (unless it was to an extension of her list). Meyer’s essay looks at the revitalized state of religious studies and features two of our colleagues at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media: ProfessorAnn Pellegrini and senior research scholar Elizabeth Castelli (who is also a Revealercontributor).

Meyer quotes Castelli, who studied at a time when social scientists considered religion entirely irrelevant to current affairs, on the difference: “We are now living in an age when we can recognize how wrong those social scientists were.” As just one example, Castelli offersPresident Bush’s recourse to “biblical authority” for his political decisions. “So, it matters, whether or not you believe in the Bible, how this person is reading the Bible and using it.” Pellegrini adds that America “has never been fully secular,” but that “religiosity is manifesting itself much more openly.”

Stephen Prothero noted this–and its potentially violent implications–in his manifesto for an “unbracketed” version of religious studies. “Since Jonestown,” he wrote, “religion has shown its dark side repeatedly—with Heaven’s Gate, at Waco, and on 9/11.” Somebody else certainly is writing the rules in many of these cases but, again, like it or not, we haven’t been able to change that fact yet.

Which leaves the option, as Castelli implies, of trying to understand. Jeff Wilson, a journalist and Tricycle editor turned religion scholar made some suggestions that apply equally well to religious studies, journalism, and the “golden calf” of impartiality:

“[Y]ou suspend your judgment in order to act as a better teacher. At the same time, this sort of limbo can itself morph into an unexpected sort of spiritual discipline. Always questioning, never coming down exactly anywhere, always observing the self for signs of attachment or bias–it gets a little Zen if you keep at it. Self-effacement takes on a sort of ideology, with impartiality turned into a golden calf. You can become a zealot, especially since we have to present ourselves as unbiased in order to pass muster–first as grad students, then as adjuncts, and hopefully finally during the tenure review process.

“It’s not like we really believe that erotics are eternal, though. These days, the watch-word in Religious Studies is positionality, which is why Prothero comes off a little stale. We make a gesture toward self-revelation early on, establish our place on the map, then proceed to direct our tales from that position. If you do it right, the audience half-forgets about you as the man behind the curtain, and turns its attention to the story that you weave. But your peers are always welcome to point out precisely where you are (and are not) at any given moment, so the myth of the “God’s-eye vantage point” is avoided…

“On the one hand, no one believes that journalists are “Fair and Balanced.” On the other hand, unless it is in religiously-affiliated venues (such as Tricycle or Christianity Today), journalists have to studiously keep the “I” out of their work, _especially_ when dealing with religious topics. I’m not sure anyone is fully satisfied with the results. Let’s face it, reporting on religion is simultaneously one of the most important and least skillfully handled areas in the globalized powderkeg we now live in. Journalists rarely have the specialized training it takes to get these complicated cases right, while scholars usually can’t master even the most basic elements of putting their knowledge to use for the general public. Is the answer to become Prothero-ized and start wearing our opinions on our sleeves?…[I]f we’re going to have unbracketed journalistic coverage of religion (not necessarily a bad thing), we’re still going to need writers trained to look beyond their own commitments. The erotics aren’t just going to go away. I guess what we really need is people who can do both at the same time: tell us where they’re coming from, but recognize that their place is just one siting from a single angle of view. Maybe that would satisfy Prothero, his inquirers, and the needs of good scholarship/reporting together.”