By Jeff B. Pool, Ph.D.
Eli Lilly Chair in Religion and Culture Professor of Religion
Chairperson, Department for Studies of Religions and Spirituality

Introduction

In this essay, I explore a popular contemporary notion or concept: “academic studies of religions and spirituality.” First, I identify an erroneous distinction between academic studies of religious phenomena and religious studies of such phenomena that the larger concept sometimes presupposes, considering several significant problems in that distinction. Second, I propose a more useful distinction with which to characterize academic studies of religions and spirituality.