Instituting a Strictly Scientific Study of Religion with Donald Wiebe

Abstract

The Interview brings you in-depth exchanges with scholars who have impacted the way we carry out work in the academic study of religion. In this edition, Bulletin editor Richard Newton sat with Donald Wiebe (Trinity College in the University of Toronto, co-founder of the North American Association for the Study of Religion, and twice-former president of the International Association for the History of Religions). They discuss institution-building in our field—from navigating the conflation of critical and confessional approaches at the university level, to association building, to defending its raison d’être. The latter concern most recently came to a head within the IAHR in an incident that Wiebe expounds upon in his latest book, An Argument in Defense of a Strictly Scientific Study of Religion: The Controversy at Delphi (Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion 2021).