Angewandte und zugleich kritische Religionswissenschaft

• Main Author: Anna-Konstanze Schröder
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft 2008-12-01
• Series: Zeitschrift für Junge Religionswissenschaft
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/zjr/727

Insights from the study of religions can be applied to various practical questions, for instance, the influence of religion on mental health. But what about contract research by religious organisations, for example, for consulting services? In this article I will point out that the applied study of religions (Angewandte Religionswissenschaft) can still be scholarship critical of the scholar's perspective and of the religious ideology under examination. The basis for this is an empirical, social scientific, theorybased and hypothesis-testing methodology. Therefore, it is theory in the study of religions which is the actual subject of critical scholarship. Furthermore, it is argued that the problem of responsibility for any possible exploitation of research results lies with the individual scholar and is indeed a question of ethics.