In April 2013, SAGE International publishing house announced the release of a new journal Critical Research on Religion ("Journal of Critical Research on Religion", the journal's web page: crr.sagepub.com). Since then, a pilot issue has been published, as well as a special issue dedicated to the critical sociology of religion. We talked about the vision and objectives of the new publication with one of its chief editors, Prof. The editorial board also includes Jonathan Boyarin of Cornell University and Warren Goldstein of Harvard University.

Roland Boer is a research professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and Professor of Literature at Renmin University of China, author of twenty monographs, eleven collections, and numerous articles on the topics of biblical studies, religion, politics, Marxism, and contemporary rock music. With the biography and full list of publications of Prof. Boer can be found on his author's blog stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com.

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About the new religious studies publication - "Journal of Critical Study of Religion"

Roland Boer:

"To distinguish between the negative and the positive in religion..."

Roland Boer - Research Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Professor of Literature at Renmin University of China. Roland.Boer@newcastle.edu.au

This is an interview by Roland Boer, one of the coeditors of a new SAGE journal "Critical Research on Religion" (first two issues published in 2013). Boer talks about editorial policy and research focus of the new publication. The title contains reference to Frankfurt School with its attempt to integrate Marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism into empirical social studies. The field also includes post-colonial, post-structuralist and gender studies. The editorial board of the new journal will also follow a certain agenda in dealing with religion, trying to distinguish between some "deficiencies" of religious phenomena and a potential "harm" they can produce from those elements of religion that contribute to the progress and fullness of human condition.

Keywords: religion, religious studies, social theory, ideology, progress, Frankfurt school, critical theory.

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What is the peculiarity of your approach and how does the journal differ from other publications devoted to the scientific study of religion?

When we proposed our project to SAGE publishing, we proceeded from two key points. First, it is the theme of the "critical study of religion", which refers to the thinkers of the Frankfurt School, to their attempts to fit Marxism into the context of empirical social research, as well as psychoanalysis, feminism, and so on. Later, this led to the emergence of the so-called critical approach, which currently includes a whole ensemble of trends: postcolonialism, poststructuralism, gender studies, and so on. We believe that all this is in demand today. Secondly, it is the specific content of the term "critical" itself, as we understand it. The fact is that critical often means scientific as supposedly objective and not marked with the sign of ideologies. In contrast to this approach, we propose to return to the original meaning of the Greek kritikos, which means parsing, judging, recognizing. And according to Ernst Bloch, in the process of "recognizing" religion, both elements that are negative and, on the contrary, elements that can be attributed to positive ones are found in it. That is, without claiming to be an empirically objective study of religion, carried out from a supposedly external, disinterested position, we are talking about a research procedure designed to determine which of the elements of religion is "flawed" or can cause harm, but also about which of its inherent elements contributes to social progress. As you can see, there is a certain left-wing emphasis and left-wing agenda in all this. It seems to me that SAGE appreciated the fact that we are ready to take a certain position in relation to the acute issues of our time related to religion, that is, that the magazine will actively participate in all these discussions.

In this regard, could you comment on the current state of religious studies? Are there any problem areas that make a magazine with this kind of agenda relevant?

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It seems to me that the study of religion has encountered a process of secondary self-identification (a second-generation process of identity). Initially, it was about how we define ourselves and our field in relation to theology, while today we are already criticizing the latter for being biased and unscientific. This follows the path taken by other disciplines in the 20th century. By adopting the position of purely objective scientific research, they got rid of their earlier social orientation-they gave up the idea that science is designed to benefit society, and limited themselves to a purely descriptive approach. As Immanuel Wallerstein writes, the main scientific disciplines have become a way for the West to understand itself and the world in which the West considered itself the rightful master1. With the help of our magazine, we want to draw attention to the fact that as a result of self-identification, a key element was lost-the desire for positive movement forward based on new ideas and new opportunities. However, all of this happens in a specific context.

Today, the topic of "the return of religion" is being heard, although I personally prefer to call this phenomenon "new visibility of religion". It is obvious that religion plays one of the key roles in various world processes, and even within national states it is again given a very important place. For example, in Russia and other countries, the problem of religion is quite acute due to the fact that the church has gained political power, influence, etc.Or take Western Europe, where there are territories that are very secular in their way of life, but at the same time consider Christianity an integral part of their national identity. Or let us recall the attempts to offer an ontological identity as a response to the "challenge of Islam" - such attempts usually have a religious connotation. I will also add the work of people I call new-old atheists: 2 these authors are diligently reviving the atheistic models of the nineteenth century, but this is just a symptom of the changed status of religion in the world. All these factors increase the relevance of the journal.

1. См. Wallerstein, I. (2011) The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (особ. Chapter 5, "Liberalism as Social Science").

2. We mean authors like K. Hitchens, R. Dawkins, V. Stenger and others. - Note by S. Kozin.

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I hope that we will be able to formulate an answer to all these points, but in such a way that the social orientation of research, once inherent in intellectual disciplines as a whole, but already in connection with new, modern problems, will be preserved and will receive a new breath. This is where we see our contribution.

So the journal wasn't conceived as a purely academic journal?

The academic approach recognizes the unavoidable political nature of activity, although this is often denied in attempts to strip science of a social perspective, which is exactly what has happened in disciplines like history, economics, and the social sciences, where the social agenda has been systematically eliminated, so that the purely descriptive aspect has become dominant.

The editorial for pilot issue 3 also criticizes the anthropology and sociology of religion for their "structural ideological assumptions". What is meant in this case?

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. When the social agenda is withdrawn in these disciplines, it is done with a claim to non-ideologicity. But the sad fact is that the ideology has not gone away, it is still with them. Therefore, one of the tasks of the journal is ideological criticism, which includes two points. The first is negation. We try to point out the limitations and problems that exist, for example, in the anthropology of religion, the sociology of religion, the history of religions, or theology. But this is only the first step, a kind of hermeneutics of suspicion. The second point is the hermeneutics of recovery, when we identify elements that can lead beyond limitations to new opportunities. This is precisely the second meaning of the term "ideology": ideology is not just a form of false consciousness or even a description of a state, but something necessary that forms human life and activity. So in on-

3. Available for download on the magazine's website (crr.sagepub.com), as well as through the blog of the Center for Critical Studies of Religion: www.criticaltheoryofreligion.org/blog.

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In the shem magazine, we want to be emphatically ideological in the sense that we are going to identify the progressive potential of religion. I like to say that Christianity has two opposing tendencies, reaction and revolution, and that it has historically shifted from one direction to the other. We would like to describe this tension and, moreover, are ready to take a very definite position in relation to it - to contribute to moving forward, using elements that, for lack of a better word, can be called progressive, that is, that work for full-fledged human communication and improving the living conditions for most people.

In other words, do you draw the definition of progressive from the Marxist repertoire?

There is a strong dose of Marxism here, but not only that. Rather, I would describe it as a social democratic agenda: against privileged classes and groups, for the benefits that are available to the majority of people, not to the minority. Marxism is part of this social movement, but today it also includes various anarchist and religious movements and ideas. One of the topics that we would like to analyze in the journal is progressive social movements with religious overtones. There is a wealth of research on right-wing religious radicalism, the so-called "religious right," or conservative Islam, but not much has been written about the religious left, how it has manifested itself historically, or what opportunities it finds today.

Does the geographical context matter to you? Does it take into account the fact that religion and approaches to it, both scientific and everyday, differ in different regions of the world? You talked about the unifying social-democratic element, but what about the differences, including those due to location?

What you are talking about has made itself felt quite concretely. The fact is that the supervisory board we proposed initially consisted of almost all Americans. But then the people from SAGE advised to expand the scope by making it international, because

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the issues we address are global in nature. So now you will find scientists from China, Taiwan, Eastern, Northern and Western Europe in the council, and in addition we have representatives from Latin America 4 and Africa. In all these regions, religion is present in different historical configurations, so it is impossible to remain in an inherently imperial position when American problems are presented as universal problems, and the American approach is the only possible solution. For example, China has never had a state religion; for a time, it supported Buddhism or Confucianism, but there has never been such a phenomenon as a state religion. Accordingly, in this case, it is impossible to write the history of secularism as the history of the separation of church and state or religion from state, that is, the narrative of secularization does not work here. This forces us to look at the problem in a completely different way. For example, how do we assess the current situation with religion in China, when its western and central provinces are home to a significant number of Muslims, when there are 120 million Christians, when Buddhism was historically present in it, and Christianity for a long time, when Confucianism still permeates all layers of society? How does all this affect the policy of the Chinese authorities and people's behavior? A lot of questions arise, and the answers to them give us a lot of interesting positions and points of view, and this, in turn, relativizes the categories postulated as normative, that is, when the problem is considered exclusively from the Atlantic - North American and Western European - point of view.

Does the Australian specifics add anything to such an unorthodox (iconoclastic) attempt to reconfigure the geopolitical matrix of religious studies?

The situation in Australia is characterized by its own history of compromises between religion and the state, and the fact that most of the world's religious leaders have not been able to reach a consensus.-

4. Including Otto Maduro, a sociologist of religion, Professor of World Christianity at Drew University, President of the American Academy of Religion (2012), who died shortly after the recording of this interview. Maduro's main academic theme was the liberating potential of Christian movements. This article is dedicated to his bright memory. - Note by S. Kozin.

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The state language has never been part of the Australian university system, and it brings additional specifics. In this case, it is important, I think, to pay attention to three points. First, as a State and nation, Australia is at a crossroads, rethinking its identity and place in the world. If in the old days we considered ourselves an outpost of Western civilization, now all this is changing. The fact is that geographically the country is located between the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia, so we have a lot of contacts with Pacific island states, but we are also an important member of the Southeast Economic Network. This gives us a different view of what is happening in the world. The second point is more related to my personal observations. Since Australia is located far away from the world's power centers located in the Northern Hemisphere, we have the opportunity to look at problems differently than it does where the power framework sets the appropriate rules of the game. Let's say we get something that is not so easy to implement in other places. Although, of course, there are limitations here as well. Third, one of the features of the Australian intellectual climate is that when you apply for a job at an academic institution, you are unlikely to find many colleagues who are specialists in your particular field. Often you are the only such specialist, and you have to build your own professional network, and not just a national one. Therefore, as a rule, we travel a lot and communicate with colleagues from other countries, much more than in other regions.

There is another group of scientists promoting the "critical study of religion" model, which is based in Scotland, at the University of Stirling. Your magazine has published an article by one of its representatives, Timothy Fitzgerald. What is the difference between the editorial board's approach and that of this group?

This is an interesting coincidence, indicating that the understanding of "critical" is a matter of contention. As I understand it, the scientists you mentioned are focusing attention

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not on the self-determination of religious studies in relation to theology, while defending the objective, scientific nature of the first discipline, but on the criticism of the very concept of "religion"...

In line with what Talal Asad wrote about?5

Yes. They criticize " religion "as a concept and a scientific category, as well as a certain approach to the study of this"religion". In their criticism, they proceed from the obvious fact that the definition of religion, as it was formulated in the XVIII-XIX centuries, is based on purely Christian ideas. Since the days of European colonialism, " religion "has included the presence of religious specialists, doctrines, institutional structures, and so on.Therefore, Christian missionaries and travelers, when they discovered unfamiliar cultures, automatically passed them through the sieve of these categories, calling" religion " only that which corresponded to these categories... But take Confucianism as a test: there are no gods, but there are institutions, cultural practices, and even temples dedicated to a particular person. Does this mean that Confucianism is a religion, or should it be recognized as a special cultural form? How do we describe it?

Returning to the comparison of these approaches: we are aware of the efforts of this group of scientists and agree that terms such as" religion "should be considered from the point of view of"hermeneutics of suspicion". At the same time, we want to move on by stating something like this: all this is true, but the term "religion", whether it is appropriate or not, is still with us, and we have to deal with it. So let's look at the effects within those constellations that we call religion or something else, and analyze which of them are progressive, that is, they contribute to the positive growth of humanity, etc. In other words, we are not going to limit ourselves to the approach you mentioned.

So we're back to defining religion as both "good and bad.".. But, in fact, this is a biblical model, according to which-

5. См. Asad, T. (1983) "Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz", Man 18.2 (June): 237 - 259.

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swarm of people steal for themselves the knowledge of good and evil, being taught by Satan (see Gen 3: 5). As a biblical scholar and the founder of another scientific journal, on the Bible and modern critical theory, 6 as well as the author of monographs that analyze the theological content of "left-wing" philosophy, you know this very well. What do the Bible and theology offer methodologically?

My method, as I define it for myself, is a Marxist reading of the Bible, although in a broader sense it can be called a critical study of religion. I've worked with post-structuralism, post-colonialism, empire studies, feminism, and so on, all of which are more or less connected to political movements and still feed on them. I am much less interested in traditional approaches, whether they are confessional readings of the Bible or so-called "historical criticism." Of course, I use the entire arsenal of bible studies-philology, textual analysis, etc., but I use them for other purposes. I am not interested in religious apologetics, in particular the "detoxification" of biblical texts that promote violence, the status quo, power, wealth, and so on. Not every text can be detoxified. From the point of view of a critical approach, it is better to recognize that there is nothing to detoxify. Texts of this kind should be left as they are, but we can also pay attention to other texts that contain other possibilities, for example, those in which the voice of the oppressed themselves is heard... If we talk about theology... It seems to me that one of the central theological problems is the question of evil, that is, the question of what gives rise to the mentioned status quo, repressive regimes, reactions, etc. In the Bible, this question is solved in three ways. The first solution is when evil is attributed to an external opposing force, the devil or Satan, who is not quite equal to God. This is a rather late development of the biblical religion, but in essence it does not give anything, since the question remains as to who is responsible for the emergence of such a force. This is how we get extra-biblical stories about the fallen angel, etc. The second solution reduces the problem to free will: God creates people free, but they choose evil. This is a fairly popular re-

The Bible and Critical Theory 6. (available at www.bibleandcriticaltheory.org).

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There is a great deal of confusion in theology, but it also runs into a curious problem: it turns out that God is responsible for evil, since it was He who created people free. All this is focused in the image of the Garden of Eden: it has a tree of knowledge of good and evil and free-willed people, and therefore, something is wrong in this ideal creation, the image of paradise is inherently flawed. But, on the other hand, the same thing is dictated by the narrative itself: if Adam and Eve had not eaten from the tree of knowledge, there would have been no subsequent story, and we would have been stuck in the Garden of Eden forever... But there is a third solution, which theologians do not often dare, despite the fact that the Bible has relevant texts: God is the source of both good and evil, and from time to time He changes His disposition from good to bad - He repents and sends destruction and death to people. This may be interpreted as a punishment for sin, but sometimes (for example, in Ezekiel) it is quite clear that in reality God leaves people no choice but to do evil - so that He can punish them. In the Bible, these are called laws that are bad, even evil, but are also divine laws. It seems to me that this is the most dialectical approach, because in the language of theology, the idea is expressed here that within the religious position there is a tendency to evil - to violence, reaction, enslavement of people, but at the same time, coupled with this trend, there is another-concern for universal prosperity, and they cannot be separated. Personally, I am most interested in exploring the tension created by these two trends.

It turns out that for you critical is akin to dialectical?

Dialectic is the first step, and the second step is "discernment". It is impossible to be in a dialectical gap all the time, at some point you need to make a choice... Of course, you will ask: who, in fact, decides what prosperity, social progress, etc. is? It seems to us that the legacy of the Frankfurt School helps us to decide in this case: we need to clearly understand what we support as progressive. And this is exactly what interested SAGE in the concept of our magazine. Both in their opinion and in our opinion, the topic is overdue.

Interviewed by Sergey Kozin

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