Introduction: Is There Room for Theory in Religious Studies?

Philip L. Tite

doi:10.26443/arc.v31i.982

Is There Room for Theory in Religious Studies?

Authors

Philip L. Tite University of Virginia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26443/arc.v31i.982

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Published

2003-05-01

How to Cite

Tite, P. L. (2003). Introduction: Is There Room for Theory in Religious Studies?. Arc: The Journal of the School of Religious Studies, 31, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.26443/arc.v31i.982

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Issue

Vol. 31 (2003): Arc: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies

Section

Introduction from the Editors

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Call For Papers: “Secularism, Religion, and Freedom”

June 5, 2025

The editors of Arc: Journal of the School of Religious Studies are pleased to announce a call for papers and book reviews for our forthcoming volume (Vol. 53). McGill University and the School of Religious Studies has a field-defining place in both the study of religion and the study of secularism. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, one of the pioneers of the discipline of religious studies in North America, taught an undergraduate class in comparative religion. While an undergraduate at McGill in 1950, Charles Taylor attended these lectures and describes them as transformative. Taylor’s 2007 opus A Secular Age was, likewise, transformative and determinative for all subsequent studies into the nature of the secular and remains the touchstone in the field. It was written in Berlin in conversation with Hans Joas and José Casanova. In 2025, all three scholars returned to McGill for a retrospective seminar with graduate students on their work on secularism and religion, along with discussions of the future of these concepts.

More information can be found in "Announcements".

Introduction