You Are Here: Mapping Religious Studies in Canada

Abstract

This short essay introduces the contributions to this special feature of Studies in Religion.

I am pleased to introduce readers to these reflections on From Seminary to University: An Institutional History of the Study of Religion in Canada, a new book by Aaron Hughes, the Philip S Bernstein Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. Although Hughes now teaches in the United States, he has lived most of his life in Canada, and has been deeply engaged in the scholarly conversations we have been having in this country for the past two decades.

I have invited seven scholars from a range of backgrounds to reflect critically on From Seminary to University. These peers include Rebekka King, William Morrow, Géraldine Mossière, Jennifer Selby, David Seljak, Merinda Simmonds, and Teemu Taira. Among this group one finds scholars who are junior and senior, male and female, local and foreign, humanists and social scientists, insiders and outsiders, and text and culture experts, not to mention people working on issues ranging from the ancient Near East to contemporary Quebec.

As Hughes notes several times, it would be impossible for one book to offer a comprehensive account of the development of our field. The advanced study of religion in Canada might have a relatively short history, but in it one sees a great range of forces, including: nation-building impulses evident in the foundation of our first universities; mixed opinions on the role religion (meaning, Christianity) ought to have in these institutions; competition among various kinds of Christianity to be the most privileged, de facto or de jure; assumed duties of universities to “civilize” new settlers; the divergence between theology and religious studies; the impact of public policies (esp. immigration) on the courses offered; the role of universities and Christianity in the state’s dispossession of Indigenous peoples; and tensions between classical and technical educations, to name just a few.

In short, the situation is complicated, and Hughes is a good guide. The book stands in a lineage of state-of-the-art reviews of religious studies and theology in Canada, as well as Harold Coward’s 2014 personal retrospective. I particularly appreciated the ways Hughes distinguishes the processes that unfolded in Canada from those that characterized the US situation. I have the luxury of being moored at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society (est. 1991), a research center that both stands outside of and is also a product of the vectors Hughes traces. His work changes the way I see the CSRS and the forces out of which it grew.

According to most of the writers I have invited to respond, this book ought to be considered required reading for actual or potential graduate students who want to see where they stand on a kind of historical map of the field. I am certain—or at least I hope—that other scholars will fill in the areas of the map that Hughes acknowledged that he needed to trace lightly in pencil.

The uncharted territory here is not just particular cities or regions (especially in Quebec), but also particular dilemmas (especially related to racial, ethnic, and gender justice issues and the hegemonic function of colonial norms) that have animated religious studies scholars over the past two decades.

Hughes has done our profession a great service in providing this fine-grained account of the history of our field, journals, associations, funding, and political dilemmas. He has told this story concisely and coherently. It will fall to others to address the ways our peers and students wrestle with issues that were either unimaginable or embryonic in the era Hughes considered. The following short reflections are interesting both as means of understanding the book, but also as ways of understanding the additional questions the book raises for a wide range of our colleagues.