Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
ICSA International Conference 2025 - Montreal, QC
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Eileen Barker
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Abstract: Historically, those with a professional interest in the study of minority religions have been labelled as either a cult apologist or an anti-cultist. A few of us have had both labels thrust upon us. It is now over 30 years ago that I entitled my Presidential Address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion “The Scientific Study of Religion? You Must be Joking!” In it, I attempted to show that the social sciences cannot hope to emulate the natural sciences by providing invariable laws of human behaviour. However, by adopting the methodology of the sciences they can – and should – succeed in, at least, disproving some of the ignorance, misinformation and disinformation that surround the enormous variety of religions and spiritual movements to be found in contemporary society – and, perhaps, in providing a few insights that have eluded the conventional wisdom of the day. In this paper, I outline some of both the limitations and the potentials of a scientific approach. My conclusion remains that which it was all those years ago: “If the scientific study of religion is a joke, it is a very serious joke.”
ICSA International Conference 2025 - Montreal, QC
-
Eileen Barker
-
Abstract: Historically, those with a professional interest in the study of minority religions have been labelled as either a cult apologist or an anti-cultist. A few of us have had both labels thrust upon us. It is now over 30 years ago that I entitled my Presidential Address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion “The Scientific Study of Religion? You Must be Joking!” In it, I attempted to show that the social sciences cannot hope to emulate the natural sciences by providing invariable laws of human behaviour. However, by adopting the methodology of the sciences they can – and should – succeed in, at least, disproving some of the ignorance, misinformation and disinformation that surround the enormous variety of religions and spiritual movements to be found in contemporary society – and, perhaps, in providing a few insights that have eluded the conventional wisdom of the day. In this paper, I outline some of both the limitations and the potentials of a scientific approach. My conclusion remains that which it was all those years ago: “If the scientific study of religion is a joke, it is a very serious joke.”
