Religion News Service
UNITED STATES, March 22, 2004: When Robert Orsi, the outgoing president of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), delivered his presidential address to the annual meeting in November, he was caught in a heated dispute that marks a pivotal moment in the history of the study of religion in the United States. The AAR’s board of directors had decided, starting in 2008, to hold their annual meeting separately from the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). With a smaller membership than the AAR, which counts just under 10,000 individual members, and a third of its members active in both association, the 7,500-member SBL had never considered uncoupling even though the annual meetings had swollen into sprawling, multi-hotel affairs. Those who listened to Orsi’s November address heard the history of the study of religion: from its origins as a confessional discipline mainly concerned with Christian theology and history to the vast and global field of inquiry of today. As the umbrella association for religion scholars, the AAR must reflect this diversity, he argued. That means declaring its independence from the SBL. “Given the diversity and development of the field over the past 30 years, how do we go forward into the future? I believe the way to do this is not to go forward with the AAR inexorably linked to a society whose primary focus is the study of Western Scripture,” says Orsi. The AAR’s decision puts religious diversity at the forefront of its mission. Vasudha Narayanan, professor at the University of Florida and a past president of the AAR, supports the move. “The decision acknowledges a new pluralism we have in this country and the importance of studying all religions in a number of different ways,” she says.