ABSTRACT
There is a tendency to appreciate religion and diverse religious expressions, in much the same way, perhaps, that some art appreciation courses train students to respect or even savor something called “art,” and often doing so with very little interest in the material and social conditions that lead to its creation let alone its changing valuation over time. While today in most liberal democracies—itself a form of government, traced to eighteenth-century Europe, that, like others, could be understood to be founded on a specific way of navigating and thereby managing this very issue—the term pluralism is often employed as positive thing for society. Sometimes scholars of religion are called to weigh in on matter of civic pluralism, within their own social group, to defend it in light of detractors. The critical scholar more than likely realizes that the goal of the study of religion is not to make normative positions on pluralism.
