For the guy who sits in the back of my Ozarks religion class and gracelessly voices his asinine opinions about what should be done to improve the religious studies department.
Characters in the Play:
THE CLOSET THEOLOGIAN, a 20-something religious studies major at a public admissions university
ACADEMIA (personified)
CHORUS
THE CLOSET THEOLOGIAN stands at a fork in the road. On the right path stands ACADEMIA; further up the path is a secular university. On the left path, in the distance, is a seminary.
CLOSET THEOLOGIAN [troubled, confessional]: The theories class is ridiculous. Why should we study “theories of religion”? It just seems so obvious to me. I have no problem studying religion. So I don't need all these people we're reading who just talk about religion, arguing about who gets to write about it, how we should study it and think about it. Religion is just so simple, right? Religion is just the thing that gives our lives meaning, right? It's our ultimate concern!
ACADEMIA: Religion is not sui generis; it is a category.
CLOSET THEOLOGIAN [not comprehending]: One of these readings, it was written by this guy Donald Wiebe, I think. Man, I wrote so much in the margins of the textbook because I mean I disagreed with like every point the guy was making. It was like he was trying to criticize us for being religious at all; he was saying that we shouldn't study religions from a religious perspective, and that religious studies has become a front for Christian theology—as if it's bad to approach religion from a theological angle. But the whole point is that I am religious, and I want to write about my religion and talk about what good my religion has done for the world and for individual people. You know, that's what it should all be about.
ACADEMIA: The academic study of religion does not exist to defend “religions themselves” or to make the practitioners of any faith “feel good.”
CLOSET THEOLOGIAN [not comprehending, but noticeably flustered and increasingly desperate]: What should be offered as the seminar in religious studies is a class that would teach you how to practice religion. Why do we spend a week studying post-structuralism? No one can understand that stuff anyway! How can meaning be created by power?! I mean, when I read this stuff, every time I sit down with the book, I can't focus. All I can think is “shut up shut up shut up!” You're wrong! Everything these people say goes completely against everything I've ever learned in church and what my parents have taught me! So it has to be wrong!
As THE CLOSET THEOLOGIAN rambles, ACADEMIA turns its back on him and enters the university. THE CLOSET THEOLOGIAN now stands alone, broken, on the verge of weeping. Finally, he turns and follows the left path to the seminary.
Enter CHORUS.
CHORUS: Here ends the tragedy of the Closet Theologian. The only contribution to the academic study of religion he is capable of making would be to abandon it. But do not mourn him; rather, mourn the world, for if the Closet Theologian is ever able to string together enough clauses into a moderately coherent series of sentences and publish a book, it will undoubtedly sell more copies than anything written by Tomoko Masuzawa, Talal Asad, or J. Z. Smith (though it will, in all likelihood, proudly but erroneously stand adjacent to them on the shelves of your local bookstore in the “religion” section—you know, the section sandwiched between New Age and Christian Inspiration, principally populated by vapid suburbanites who feel a misplaced affinity for “Eastern religions” because “Western religions” are so “intolerant” and “violent” whereas “Eastern religions” are “peaceful” and all about “living in the moment,” but whose knowledge of Buddhism, the religion they claim to practice, comes primarily from Deepak Chopra and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; yeah, that section).
CURTAIN
