Study of religion has two aspects that constitute two separate approaches. First aspect is descriptive, that seeks to study social, economic, and political characteristic of religion as human and social practice, and also as social institution. This aspect looks at religion as social reality comprising of material, practical and symbolic structuring of human and social consciousness and action.
Second aspect, normative, emphasises shared rules or norms that binding people together, directing their action, and sustaining society of the believers as a whole. This aspect conceives religion as ideology, a set of values that structures human experience of both mundane and divine worlds.
It then requires interpretive model of understanding and explaining religion. However, study of religion, similar to study of culture in general, has also included other aspects such as historical, psychological and structural aspects (Berry, 2002: 226-227). In practice of studying religion, both descriptive and normative need to take into account aspects of religion that other aspects emphasise.
How do two aspects or concepts above relate or compared to emic and etic study of religion?
It should be noted that both emic and etic are part of methodological debate on how best we collect and analyse religion (Berry, 2002:291-2). The emic approach emphasises that study of religion should examine only one religion as non-comparable, undertaken within the religious realm, and structure as well as criteria should be taken from internal experience of the religious community.
While etic approach argues that our position in the study of religion should be outside of the religion, such study should be comparable to other religions with its analytical structure and criteria conceived as absolute or universal. With this distinction in mind, both emic and etic approaches is equally capable of being employed to methodologically inform both descriptive and normative conceptualization of religion.
Applying to both conceptualization, emic approach shares culturalist assumption that every religion, or every culture in general, has distinct practices and symbolically meaningful structure of experience, either at personal and interpersonal level of the religious community. As researcher, our cognitive and affective mode of apprehending religion are entirely different from religious community under study.
Either studying its descriptive or normative aspect, our approach is flawed in the first place because we inherit in our cognition and affection different worldview of religion. Results of our study are consequently invalid, mirroring more our colonization of the other’s life-world rather than presenting their objective and subjective experience and practice.
On the other hand, application of etic approach to both concepts starts from one central assumption that religious experience and practice are comparable to others, that there are a number of principal similarity in terms of practice and norms between religions or culture. In contrast to relativist underpinning of emic approach, this trans-cultural/religious approach, however, has rooted in universalist-modernist epistemology and sensibility.
In response to the question on the difference between theology and study of religions, we can start by saying that theology focuses its attention on understanding the sacred text and how to interpret divine truth and the world under the guidance of such textual interpretation. Its organizing principle is to understand dialectics between immanence and trancendence of religious experience with the ever refreshing reading of the sacred text or the bible.
In Christianity, for instance, there has been a long list of theological strands, from Moral Theology up to the most contemporary such as Liberation Theology, Orthodoxy Theology, Negative Theology and Insurgent Theology. Theological account of historical, economic, social, cultural and political forces intends to provide textual reading of the bible with contemporariness of divine salvation and love and human suffering.
Study of religions, in contrast, begins its questions of religion as social fact, social force, and social institution. Its starting point is how human as individual and collective interacts with each other within relatively organized and institutionally reproduced values and actions. It understands religion as human, mundane affairs, either as opium, exchange, or social control (Turner, 1991:1-13; see also Nisbet 1966:221-263).
In our experience with Christianity, both current theological study and study of this religion have reached a point of intersection due to poststructuralist revival of christianity’s potentials as radical critique of contemporary neoliberalism and the entrenched crisis it imposes on human experience and sensibility. Poststructuralist sociology of religion and Liberation Theology including Insurgent Theology continue to have productive conversation out of which critical study of Chrisitanity starts to engange emancipatory potential of theology and contemporary theology launches its trancendental reappraisal of postmodern crisis with the analytical backup of critical sociology of Christianity.
However, such conversation has so far taken place at global level. In Indonesia, critical study of Christianity remains limited, focusing on celebrating and justifying religion as supreme, benevolent to the society, and less attention to complicity of Christianity with political economic structure that reproduces the poor and the powerful. Such bad news also signals the reluctance of Christian theology to unpack internal power structure of Christian Church that impedes its collective campaign for justice and equality.
Beside breakthroughs currently undertaken, we also suggest that Christian theology and social study of Christianity should liberate themselves from majority/minority binary that favors language of the victim and must undertake joint actions with Islamic communities and other religious groups in variety of strategic fronts.
Reference
Berry, John et all. Cross-Cultural Psychologyt: Research and Applications. See, Chapter 11 “Methodological Concerns”, Pp 286-315, and Chapter 9 “Approaches from Cultural Anthropology” pp 225-253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002
Nisbet, Robert. The Sociological Tradition. Chapter 6 “The Sacred”, pp 221-263. New York: Basic Books, 1966
Turner, Bryan. Religion and Social Theory. See “Introduction”, pp 1-13. London: Sage Publications, 1991