Why is Religion Always About Something Else?

Religion is crucial for grasping multiple aspects of history, society, politics and culture. But religion can also be a hot-button topic, and many teachers are therefore uncertain about how to talk about it. A common way to neutralize the danger associated with talking about religion therefore is to restrict it to an object of analysis, stripped of affect. Instead of talking about beliefs or practices that might raise uncomfortable questions or irresolvable conflict, religion is presented to students as serving a variety of other functions. Reduced to its function in society, in this way, religion is better thought of as being “about something else,” rather than in terms that try, at least, to plumb its perhaps ineffable meaning for adherents.  I have been led increasingly to wonder about the effects of this bracketing of belief on students. By unmasking religion as fundamentally about something else, do we unfairly prevent them from the kind of encounter with challenging, and yes, even alien ideas that forms the core of a liberal arts education? The answer is not and cannot be simple. Nevertheless, this essay argues that historians can do much to show how religion is deeply embedded in human life, and that the passions people feel for or against it are as much a part of history as the other interests it might be said to serve.