Interpreting Religion

This edited volume brings together leading philosophers of religion to examine fundamental questions about how religious phenomena should be understood and interpreted. Nancy Frankenberry assembles contributions that collectively challenge prevailing assumptions in religious studies and philosophy of religion, particularly regarding the relationship between interpretation, experience, and theological claims.

The collection addresses three interconnected themes. First, it interrogates the nature of religious experience and whether it can serve as an independent foundation for religious belief. Several contributors argue against the notion that religious experience provides unmediated access to divine reality, emphasizing instead how cultural and linguistic frameworks shape what counts as religious experience. This critique targets both traditional theological appeals to revelation and phenomenological approaches that claim to bracket interpretive frameworks.

Second, the volume examines how religious language functions, particularly the role of metaphor, symbol, and narrative in constructing religious meaning. Contributors explore whether religious discourse should be understood as making truth claims about transcendent reality or as expressing human values and orientations. This debate engages with both analytic philosophy of language and Continental hermeneutical traditions, questioning realist interpretations of religious language while exploring alternatives to purely reductionist accounts.

Third, the work addresses methodological questions about studying religion academically. Several essays critique the assumed neutrality of religious studies, arguing that all interpretation occurs within particular frameworks that shape what investigators perceive. This reflexive turn examines how scholarly approaches to religion necessarily involve philosophical commitments about the nature of meaning, reference, and reality.

The volume's significance lies in its systematic challenge to both traditional theological realism and simplistic naturalistic reductions of religion. By foregrounding questions of interpretation, the contributors demonstrate that disputes about God's existence or nature cannot be separated from broader questions about meaning, language, and human understanding. The collection particularly engages with pragmatist and postmodern critiques of foundationalism, showing how these philosophical developments reshape debates about religious truth claims.

Frankenberry's editorial framework emphasizes that interpreting religion requires attending to the constructive role of human categories and frameworks, while avoiding the assumption that this necessarily undermines religious significance. The volume thus opens space for understanding religion beyond the binary of literal truth versus complete illusion, suggesting more nuanced approaches to religious phenomena.