TY - JOUR AU - WIEBE, DONALD PY - 2005/01/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - The Politics of Wishful Thinking? Disentangling the Role of the Scholar-Scientist from that of the Public Intellectual in the Modern Academic Study of Religion JF - Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion JA - Temenos VL - 41 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.33356/temenos.4800 UR - https://journal.fi/temenos/article/view/4800 SP - AB - Although religion may well have relevance for various social, political, economic, cultural, and other related issues in society, I will argue here that this does not oblige the academic student of religion to become engaged with those matters. Indeed, to do so - not as a citizen but as a member of the academic guild which has responsibility to the field/discipline of Religious Studies and the modern research university at large - is to fuse and therefore confuse advocacy and scholarship. The task of the student of religion, <em>qua </em>scientist, is to seek to understand and to explain religion and religions, not to create the good society. I attempt to show here that with the infiltration of the ideal of the student of religion as public intellectual - whether as religious critic, critic of religion, or member of a new secular clerisy - the scientific agenda of seeking disinterested knowledge about religion and religions has been, and continues to be, eroded if not displaced. ER -