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Russell McCutcheon and the Role of the Scholar in Religion

In Critics Not Caretakers, Russell McCutcheon encourages scholars of religion to re-

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

critical, unapologetic study of religion that challenges unquestioned power structures.

McCutcheon wants to redescribe the academic role of scholars because he is dissatisfied

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

redescribing them as strictly historical, human processes.

While McCutcheon might agree that all religious systems deserve historical

redescription, he admits a preference of mythmaking that construct, legitimize, and contest

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

distinguishing substantiated theories from absolute claims.

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The distinction between absolute claims and theoretical arguments is an important

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

I envisioned for myself as a religious studies instructor also compelled me to indoctrinate

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

teaching religious studies in higher education. Unfortunately, McCutcheon so effectively

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.

Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001.