Balance and Empathy
One concept is the maintenance of a healthy balance between the perspective of an insider (one who practices a given religion) and the perspective of an outsider (one who studies the religion without practicing it).
For, although an insider arguably has the best vantage point on the lived realities of the religion, presumably the insider is primarily concerned with being religious and not in explaining the religion in a manner that will be most effective for those who hold other religious (or nonreligious) perspectives. It is quite natural for an insider to be biased in favor of his or her own religion. The outsider, however, has no reason to feel such bias. At the same time, the outsider would not have the benefit of experiencing the religion firsthand. It is analogous to trying to understand a goldfish in a pond. An outsider can describe the fish’s color, its movements, and its eating habits, but can say very little about what it is actually like to be a goldfish.19The academic approach to the study of religions attempts to balance the perspectives of insider and outsider, thereby drawing upon the benefits of each. It is not an intentionally religious enterprise. As we have noted previously, unlike theology, it is not doing religion or being religious. Instead, the academic approach strives to analyze and describe religions in a way that is accurate and fair for all concerned—insiders and outsiders alike. An instructive parallel can be drawn from the discipline of political science. Rather than advocating a particular political point of view, and rather than being a politician, a political scientist strives to analyze and describe political viewpoints and phenomena in a fair, neutral manner. A good political scientist could, for instance, belong to the Democratic Party but still produce a fair article about a Republican politician—without ever betraying personal Democratic convictions. A good scholar of religion, of whatever religious (or nonreligious) persuasion, attends to religious matters with a similarly neutral stance.
Another basic concept for the academic approach to religion is empathy, the capacity for seeing things from another’s perspective. Empathy works in tandem with the usual tools of scholarship—the observation and rational assessment of empirical data—to yield an effective academic approach to the study of religions. The sometimes cold, impersonal procedures of scholarship are enlivened by the personal insights afforded by empathy.