ABSTRACT
Theory, then, could name the lens between an interpreter (be it a translator, a historian, an anthropologist, or the like) and that item on which they focus, their data, and thus what they deem to be significant and thus worth their attention. Theory, in other words, forces critical scholar to ask questions (often uncomfortable ones, thus why theory has long been a controversial term and activity in our field). After all, phenomenology provides a theory of religion— whether its proponents would phrase it in that manner—that is based on the presumed essence of the sacred. But in mid-twentieth-century scholarship the word “theory” increasingly came to be associated with a more rigorous approach to the study of literature, the arts, and culture that incorporated terms and concepts from disciplines such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences. If a theory is predicated on inner experience or based on one’s assumptions as a religious practitioner, and it is therefore untestable or analyzable.
