Sunday, November 16, 2014

Reviewing the 'Religious Studies' journal

So I randomly decided to do a search on the journal Religious Studies through the Cambridge Journals database. The journal has been in print since 1966 and gives the following description:

"Religious Studies is an international journal devoted to the problems of the philosophy of religion as they arise out of classical and contemporary discussions and from varied religious traditions."

My search was motivated by the aim to consider the extent to which the 'philosophy of religion' has focused predominantly on Christian traditions. I used the search bar and focused on "this journal" and put in various search terms to provide an index to the discipline. The results were as follows:

'Christ' yielded 819 articles and book reviews
'Christianity' yielded 2074
'Christian' = 2075

'Islam' = 389
'Muslim' = 220

'Judaism' = 389
'Jew' = 220
'Jewish' = 427

'Buddha' = 153
'Buddhist' = 352
'Buddhism' = 367

'Hindu' = 302
'Hinduism' = 212

'Sikh' = 28

'Confucian' = 46

'Tao' = 34
'Taoism' = 33
'Taoist' = 25

Quite obviously the focus is overwhelmingly in favour of the Christian philosophical tradition. No other "religious tradition" breaks 500 articles or book reviews over the past 50 years despite their rich philosophical history.


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