Theology and Religious Studies

In the UK ‘Theology and Religious Studies’ has become a catch-all phrase for the academic study of religion. Several universities have a Department of Theology and Religious Studies (King's College London, Nottingham, Leeds, Chester, Glasgow, and several others), advocacy for the field is carried out by a body called Theology and Religious Studies UK (TRS UK, formerly the Association of University Departments of Theology and Religious Studies, or AUDTRS), and in 2000 representatives of British university departments of divinity, theology, religion, religious studies, biblical studies and various combinations of those terms met under the auspices of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and agreed on a benchmarking statement for the field using the phrase ‘Theology and Religious Studies’ as their heading.

The document that the QAA process produced showed the great variety in the field, but also the mutual recognition among different types of department and approach. For some who took part in the process of consultation it felt like the ‘coming of age’ of a new paradigm, of Theology with Religious Studies, which had been slowly worked out over many years. As one summary noted: ‘There is less tension between the disciplines in Britain than there is elsewhere’ (Ross, 2007).

Nevertheless, the phrase ‘Theology and Religious Studies’ is sometimes still taken to paper over a strong contrast. On one side of the contrast, ‘Theology’ might be said to assume the faith of the person doing the studying, while ‘Religious Studies’ might be said to bracket the student's faith or lack of faith, and to be a self-consciously neutral discipline. Or ‘Theology’ might be said to be the internal discourse of a specific religious community, properly at home in that community's seminaries, while ‘Religious Studies’ is a discourse belonging to the public at large, properly at home in a secular university. Or Theology might be said to be about God, while Religious Studies is about the practices and beliefs of religious people. These contrasts are sometimes summarised by saying that Theology is ‘confessional’ while Religious Studies is ‘non-confessional’. Indeed, the two sides sometimes seem to be thought to be united only by their focus on questionable objects of study, with Theology only making sense as an academic discipline if one assumes the existence of God, and Religious Studies only making sense as an academic discipline if one assumes that ‘religion’ is a wellformed category.