ABSTRACT
If some regard religion as a species of the larger genus ideology, there are those who instead propose to subsume religion within the broader category “worldview.” The latter place those things known as religions alongside other worldviews that—or so the argument goes—exhibit a sufficient number of similarities so as to warrant all being treated as examples of the same thing, context, or process. The prominent use of “worldview” in scholarship on religion today is prompted by many scholars’ effort to make sense of the so-called decline in religion. Following a long-standing practice in the study of religion, scholars now even differentiate organized from personal worldviews. Today, Ann Taves, also at the University of California at Santa Barbara and onetime president of the American Academy of Religion, is likely the best representative of a scholar who has adopted Smart’s notion of a worldview.
