WESTERN METHODOLOGY TO STUDY RELIGION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO COMPARATIVE RELIGION

The systematic study and comparison of religions have traversed a long path since Max Muller wrote Comparative Mythology in 1856. Muller had predicted about the ‘Science of Religion’ (Religionswissenschaft) as the ‘Science’ that is based on an impartial and truly scientific comparison of all, or at all events, of the most important religions of mankind. Such an approach was developed in contrast to the reductionist tendencies as found in the anthropological, sociological and psychological theories put forward by the scholars as E. B. Tylor, James Frazer, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, and Sigmund Freud, etc. The process of studying religions comparatively implied the understanding and appreciation for the religious phenomenon without passing any judgement on the religion studied. In the succeeding pages we will be discussing and analysing the approach and method known as phenomenological method in the study of religions. Such a method is a modified or revised form of comparative religion methodology as was envisioned by Max Muller in the 19th century.

http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 is demanded by those whose voice cannot be disregarded. Its title, though implying as yet a promise rather than fulfilment, has become more or less familiar in Germany, France, and America; its great problems have attracted the eyes of many inquirers, and its results have been anticipated either with fear or with delight. It becomes therefore the duty of those who have devoted their life to the study of the principal religions of the world in their original documents, and who value religion and revere [sic] it in whatever form it may present itself, to take possession of this new territory in the name of true science, and thus to protect its sacred precincts from the inroads of those who think that they have a right to speak on the ancient religions of mankind, whether those of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, or Buddhists, or those of the Jews and Christians, without ever having taken the trouble of learning the languages in which their sacred books are written. 3 The efforts of Max Muller bore fruits and in the succeeding years comparative study of religion garnered great currency and the discipline was introduced as the branch of the non-normative study of religions that promised to investigate the similarities and differences between various religions or religious phenomena empirically and scientifically, so as to arrive at the comprehensive understanding of its object, besides determining the various interactions and exchanges among religions i.e. how they relate and influence each other. 4 The process of studying religions comparatively implied the understanding and appreciation for the religious phenomenon without passing any judgement on the religion studied.
In contrast to the philosophy of religion, comparative religion did not come with any set of rules that could be employed or applied to pronounce a judgement on the truthfulness of any religion. It simply acted as a non-normative discipline. It is because of such characteristic that this science is considered in the area of phenomenology for it only analyses the phenomena just as they represent themselves, situate them in their contexts (each religion being the context in itself), bring out the importance of each theme in a given religion and then compare or 3 Muller, Friedrich Max, Introduction to the Science of Religion, Longmans, Green andCo, 1873, pp.34-35 4 New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XII, 1966 http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 contrast it with similar themes found in other religions.
The parallel premises in different religions do not forcefully imply influence and dependence; the perceptible similarities may obscure reflective differences and outward differences may conceal important similarities. Thus, the chief among the tasks of comparative religion is to equip students with a sensible approach to consider the similarities and differences found in the religions. For some as perennialists, the important task of the comparative study of religions is to locate a principle of unity that may harmonize and balance the claims and counter-claims of warring religions into unity. In the succeeding pages we will be discussing phenomenology of religion as the most popular method/approach in the field of religious studies as was envisioned by Max Muller in the 19 th century. Ismail Raji al-Faruqi praised the phenomenological method to the extent that he termed it as the highest achievement in the academic study of religion till his times. The emergence of such a neutral description on the subject of religion through the course of phenomenology arose in modern times as a reaction to 'committed'

B. Phenomenology of Religion
accounts of religion that held the stage for decades together and even still exist among those who treat religion from a theological point of view. Think for example of Christian theologian; he sees a particular historical phenomenon as providential.
This is understood as far as the standpoint of faith is concerned. However, the whole historical process itself needs to be probed 'scientifically' by sifting out the evidences, employing the techniques and formulae of historical analysis and other scientific methodology. In the upcoming pages we would be introduced to some prominent phenomenologists of religion through whose works we may arrive at the better understanding of phenomenology of religion in particular and comparative religion in general.

C. Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye
Chantepie de la Saussaye (1848-1920), was a Dutch-born scholar. Religionswissenschaft ] separated the science of religion from confessional theology, the latter being confined largely to a study of the special revelation of God in Christ (AS). This meant that for scholars to understand religion scientifically, they must note variations in the human responses to God, compile them historically and classify them for comparative purposes according to phenomenological typologies.
Chantepie was actually seeking for the unity of religions amidst the variety of its forms. Kristensen labelled the phenomenology of religion as, "the systematic treatment of the history of religion". This amounts to say that the chief job of phenomenology of religion is to classify and categorise the plentiful and widely differing data in such a way that a general view of their religious content, and values is obtained. One should not confuse such a general approach with the condensed http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 history of religion but equaled to the systematic survey of the data. 13 Kristensen argued that the study of religion assuming the name of 'science'

Kristensen was born in
should conform to the researcher's conclusions remaining fully empirical and testable. In this direction, a clear methodology was needed to ensure that empiricism.
There were such basic elements of Kristensen's approach that later became synonymous with the phenomenological method in the study of religion.
Kristensen started by clarifying the relationship between the scholar of religion and the adherents within religious communities; discussing what constitutes the objective and subjective knowing. He however introduces intuition as a key hermeneutical tool. Kristensen predicts controversies in the study of religions as the insider-outsider problem, the issue of self-reflexivity on the part of the researcher and the problem of identifying and ascertaining the meaning within the religious data.
Kristensen attaches the absolute priority to the perspectives of believers, arguing that the adherents understand their own religion better than anyone from the outside ever could. This however lands a religious scholar in an unusual dilemma quite unlike the research in other disciplines. See for example, the researcher is required to fairly represent a religion i.e. fully realizing the sentiments and interpretations of the religious community. In other words, the practices of the community have to be presented from their own standpoint. However, a scholar cannot be expected to enter sufficiently enough into a religion of which he or she is not a part to appreciate it as a believer does. Every believer one must know views his/her own religion as a unique, autonomous, complete, absolute reality, and mostly The first and foremost technique that Kristensen advocated to overcome the problem of understanding from the inside i.e. from believers point of view is 'empathy' or an 'indefinable sympathy'. 14 By such terms, he meant that a scholar attempts to relive his own experience that which is 'alien', through 'an imaginative re-experiencing of a situation strange to him.' This would engage the mind of the researcher in an act of representation, however without replicating the actual religious experience itself. Kristensen tries to acknowledge that the 'existential' nature of the religious data is not disclosed by research'.
'Empathy' that Kristensen refers to involves more than playing acting for it is nearly impossible for a scholar of religion to employ such a technique without having some personal experience of religion. We should make use of our own religious experience in order to understand the experience of others.' 15 This entails that the prime way to overcome the distance created by being an outsider is not to convert to the religion one is studying, but to employ one's own religious sensibilities to attain a feeling for how adherents experience and understand the absoluteness of their own religion. The use of empathy intensifies the personal faith of the researcher, since, Kristensen asserts, 'when religion is the subject of our work, we grow religiously. 16 Kristensen argues that the most glaring prejudice that has been imposed on the study of religions has resulted from the application of Darwinian biological evolution to an interpretation of religious development. Such a widespread idea has misrepresented and distorted the perspectives of the believers. Kristensen cautions the scholar of religion of such implications and other biased evaluations of religious data. He urges a scholar to refuse from using such techniques as interpretative tools.
Kristensen maintains that when one gives some thought to the implications of evolutionary theory [applied to religion], the distorting bias beneath its postulation becomes clear.

E. Roderick Ninian Smart
One of the most influential religious scholars of the 20 th century, Roderick

F. Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000)
Wilfred  The understanding of religions as total, self-contained systems of belief and practice is a relatively recent invention in human history, believes Smith. This has resulted mostly from Enlightenment thinking as mentioned above. Smith notes that in the Roman era, the Latin term religio communicate an adjectival meaning than a nominative one. It is so that one can see in the ancient Rome, 'religio' referring to the sacred places, or devout people, that which was 'secondary to persons or things rather than things in themselves'.
Even the Early Christianity constituted itself as a community of faith that marked a certain attitude towards life and the transcendent, distinguished by the qualities like piety, reverence, devotion, with implications for 'every aspect of the believer's life including moral, social, intellectual, and ritualistic as well. Later, the Latin religio was employed in the church as a term to allocate ritual observances as well as the structural organisation, the ecclesia [the assemblage]. This shift carried with it the sense of creating boundaries between true and false, right and wrong.
However, it was not true and false belief that mattered the most, says Smith; it indicated more as Worshipping God in a true way as opposed to worshipping false 29 Ibid, p.50 http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 deities. 30 Smith pleads his case by bringing in the attitude of St. Augustine towards religion. Augustine had declared religion as 'a vivid and personal confrontation with the splendour and love of God'. It was later under the influence of the reformer, John Calvin that the term 'Christian Religion' was used with more incidence and frequency. This however could be misunderstood easily, in the opinion of Smith.
According to him, Calvin's institutes pointed more towards 'instruction, instituting, and setting up' and not to 'an explicit institutional phenomenon, or an abstract system.' Even for Calvin, instruction in the Christian religion promoted the 'sense of piety that steers a man to worship'. It is fascinating that only after the 17 th century, the term religion began to be used for the Christian religion that ultimately recognised Christianity as one of the major religions among other world religions.
This all became a reality through the reification process of faith, observes Smith.
The argument of the Smith based on the review of Roman and Christian history rest with the remarks that religion in the West 'referred to something personal, inner, and transcendentally oriented phenomenon, traditionally; the nearest equivalent concept in modern English at the most can be conceived of that of 'piety '. 31 Through his whole argumentation W.C. Smith brought the relationship between theology and phenomenology to the fore. This can be illustrated from the fact that he termed the modern concept of religion as a reified form of faith, dismissed the belief as a proof of a secularising tendency in Western scholarship, and stressed upon the religious scholar to become the part of the subject matter of religious studies. On the other hand, His general and vigorous emphasis on the significance of appreciating and understanding the transcendent element in religion offers an impression that for him all religious traditions act as different paths that make devotees to apprehend the transcendence and the transcendent.
Smith did not contrast between the transcendence; for him transcendence is same for every religious denomination. At times his approach appears more http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 theological with the fact in view that at the back of faith lies an ontological reality.
Such an approach seems the outcome of his liberal Christian background.
In 1959, Smith encourage and emphasized on a radical form of empathy in consonance with the phenomenological contention that human is unfamiliar to his fellow human, but signaled that a scholar must possess personal faith so as to forge a dialogical study in religion. This also signaled the impact of orienting the religious studies from the science of religion towards inter-faith dialogue.
Smith argued that one cannot study religion from vacuum. It is all about studying religion from alongside or from within i.e. being member of some religious group. Whenever a student in the present times recognises himself as member of becoming of some group, even is in the process of becoming, world-wide-and interfaith. 32 The publication of Towards a World Theology in 1981 further substantiated the aim of Smith. He expressed his wish that his ambition is to make Christianity participate in the total life of mankind i.e. the intellectual, religious, the economic and the political life. Smith asserted that this invitation of his extends to others; and all are invited to do so Jewishly, Islamically, Buddhistically, or whatever. 33 The emphasis of Smith on the principle of 'empathy' in favour of the religious person and his resentment towards the reductionist approach of positivistic science makes him a sound phenomenologist. His efforts were directed to sponsor understanding that may begin with the scholarly community, and then extended to the religious communities in general. In this respect he followed the broad phenomenological principles.
He considered religion by attributing it a structure with personal faith at the core and focused towards a transcendent object and expressed with dynamism in the human history through typological categories. Smith however distinguished himself from other phenomenologists in that he embraced the theological perspective. Among the prominent phenomenologists of Northern America, Smith stands last but most influential. The most important and hot debates in religious http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 studies was generated through his writings. He generated centres around the accusation that the category 'religion' is a Christian theological construct; and it is befitting to drop that term for the future prospects of religious studies.
Smith had declared religion as an ambiguous term that needed to be broken down into major components. The first is what he called as religious experience or faith that forms the internal dimension of religion. This aspect is of immediate concern to religious practitioners and professionals. The second constituent of religion is what Smith calls labels of cumulative tradition i.e. the external dimension─ scriptures, ritual practices, morality, law, literature, myth, art and architecture, doctrines, family and community, the political order, and the like. This external aspect of religion is visible to everyone, despite diverse religious background or faith commitment. The cumulative tradition of religion matures and changes throughout the annals of history. That aspect of religion can be documented, explained, debated, and interpreted. 34

G. Conclusion
The comparative religion methodology grew out of a necessity i.e. to address the diversity of religious forms and beliefs. While it became increasingly difficult for the scholars to arrive at the truth of any particular religion or religious denomination, they turned on to the simple description and formulation of typologies of religious data available to them. While it turned complicated to gauge the truthfulness of doctrines and beliefs, a group of scholars beginning from Germany and Netherlands focused more on manifestations of religion; the ritual being the object of study.
Thus, phenomenology stood as a parallel perspective to that of reductionist approach and theological approach.
To carve out a place for the phenomenology of religion, phenomenologists identified classification of the study of religion into prescriptive and descriptive approaches. For them, Religious communities define their faith and practice in an http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 authoritative fashion, judging what is appropriate and inappropriate from their perspective. It is up to them to prescribe the authentic or true way to follow their teachings. It is not the duty of outsiders who may be interested in a particular religious tradition to make these prescriptive decisions. Instead, they have the ability to describe what has taken place in descriptions to be fair-minded and respectful, and that they should in some measure take account of the views of practitioners of that religion. But in many instances where there are deep disagreements within a religious tradition, outside scholars and commentators have a limited role. It would be inappropriate, for instance, for a Hindu scholar to take sides on the issues of the Protestant Reformation─ to decide, for instance, that either the Pope or Martin Luther was correct. While particular Christian communities may find it necessary to take sides on this dispute, it is absurd for someone who has no stake in the matter to attempt to decide, which the authoritative interpretation is. That would be a prescriptive rather than a descriptive move, and a misguided one at that. What is appropriate for the scholar is to explain what was at stake in this momentous conflict. By explaining the significance and importance of the arguments and the actors, the scholar is able to illuminate the history of religion in a way that both insiders and outsiders should be able to appreciate. 35 The phenomenology of religion thus satisfies itself at the level of describing the similarities and differences of religions both organised and un-organised without attempting to arrive at the truthfulness or falsity of any religion. The phenomenologist in particular and the comparative religionist in general thus recognise the autonomy of each religion where the practitioners of that particular religious denomination are in a better position to know the authenticity of their religious beliefs and practices. Above all the approaches/methods preceding phenomenology of religion were designed to ascertain the origin, history, function, prospects of the religion; the latter however aimed to come to terms with the diversity and multiplicity of religious characteristics; raising the battle cry, "back to the things themselves", observing and stating the manifestations of objects only. The task then shouldered by the phenomenology is 35 Ibid, 52-53 http://ijiis.or.id | e-ISSN: 2615-5184 p-ISSN: 2597-9698 to bring such diversity to a visible and intellectually compelling order.
Phenomenology came up with the shift away from the normative standards to the descriptive portrayal of religious data.
Phenomenology of religion however recognises some transcendental element or some Ultimate Reality as is reflected from the works of the above phenomenologists. The phenomenology of religion further reveals that people have opted and continue to resort to various routes towards the sacred or supernatural.
Phenomenology studies all religions in equal preposition i.e. it recognises the same thread running down the organised religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and unorganised religions like the religion of Tribal Africans and Australian Aboriginals.
Phenomenology of religion is a comparative, systematic, empirical, historical, and descriptive discipline. It is anti-reductionist and autonomous in nature. It adopts the philosphico-phenomenological idea of intentionality and epoche. It lays greater stress on the value of empathy and the systematic understanding of religious denominations. It claims to provide the insights into the essential structures and the meanings of a particular religious tradition. 36 While all is said about the achievements of phenomenology of religion as a religiously sympathetic method, it nevertheless leaves least or no scope for evaluation of the religion under study. It aims not at the identification of historical and cultural aberrations occurring among religions, thereby avoids the critical scrutiny of religious denominations.