Pre-modern Christians and Jews – as we shall see – utilized every available intellectual tool to formulate and argue the truth of their faiths. Both majority Christians and minority Jews were utterly convinced of the truth claims of the tradition to which they belonged. Only in the rarest cases did individual thinkers, particularly those with a philosophic bent, allow themselves to view religious faiths in a more distanced manner, to compare and contrast faiths, and to attempt the analysis of religious belief and behavior in functional terms. Such thinkers constituted the smallest of sub-groups on the pre-modern scene.

Within the modern academy, the study of religion has been one of the slowest disciplines to emerge. The academic study of religion began with intense focus on the Western monotheisms, which were taken to reflect the “highest” level of religious thinking and practice. It was widely presumed that religious studies should focus on belief systems, with the implication of normative judgment, implicit evaluation, and subtle effort to win over others. On these grounds, many American universities, particularly public universities, have refused to include religious studies in their curricula. To be sure, with the passage of time further foci of study and new modalities of analysis have emerged. An increasingly broad range of religious systems, both historic and contemporary, has been subjected to scrutiny. The new modalities of study include the effort to identify the common roots of religions, an effort that often masked an unspoken commitment to one or another faith community.