I was pleased to see classmates discuss and debate the issue of analyzing religious truth claims as scholars (as opposed to adherents, or otherwise sympathetic observers). In our class on the life and thought of Joseph Smith, the problem of how to account for the production of the Book of Mormon led to a divide between those who recognize a place for considering the validity of Smith's claims and those that feel Smith should be judged only from a naturalist perspective (so long as we are doing academic work). In other words, the academy can only judge Smith within its own framework, and its framework does not include a recognition of the supernatural as valid. To qualify as supernatural, some phenomenon must therefore be beyond our ability to naturally observe. So, talk of angels and revelations falls outside of the natural realm that scientific and rational analysis can observe and offer explanations. This is well and good, until the object of inquiry involves behaviors, claims, and rational experiences of religious individuals. We face this issue head on in religious studies because our entire project precisely involves humans who affirm supernatural or unrational religious experiences.

The discussion evolved into something much more generic than a debate over Joseph Smith. And I believe this tension between what reason tells us and what we want to believe is at the heart of so much difference between groups of people, be they political, religious, academic, or cultural.

What I appreciate about postcolonial theory is that it acknowledges this tension and does nothing to dismantle it, ignore it, or resolve it. Rather, postcolonialism seeks the fundamental well being of humans from every walk of life, and therefore must acknowledge the validity of an exhausting array of epistemologies. So, a postcolonialist will say that the cosmology of the Native American is not invalidated by the scientific observations of the Westerner; on the contrary, the Westerner is guilty of imposing his cosmology on the Native American, so what does this say about the validity of such cosmology? Reason cannot explain why reason is valid, or why reason accurately explains reality any more than faith can explain why faith accurately explains reality. Postcolonial theory zeroes in on that fact to question the use of knowledge and discourse to install power relations and privilege one group of people over another. In other words, the modernist must ultimately trust that scientific observation leads one to truth without proof, just like everybody else, so who's to say that scientific observation be privileged over, say, an indigenous interpretation of reality? By what standard must we affirm empiricism over any other mode of interpreting reality?

I like the idea of using religious studies to study this thing we call religion, and if religion includes affirmations of the supernatural, so be it. I'm not convinced that this somehow threatens the reasonableness of our analysis. I do worry about apologetics in the academy only because I have observed in apologetic work a tendency to hold fast to one truth claim in the face of all other criticisms or points of view, and that's precisely what I criticize about academic or scientific elitism. The academic holds up reason and empiricism as the most valid interpretation of reality, yet can only use reason and empiricism to justify that view, which I don't believe necessarily justifies that assumption. The apologist does the same, just with specific claims. Everyone would fare better by looking for what resonates with his or her own sense of honesty and integrity as players in a universe that fills our senses and imagination with experiences we seek to explain adequately, be they academic, religious, fantastical, unrational, etc., always remembering the parameters of the discourse at hand (for the betterment of the discourse itself, and what it's trying to do).