The Introduction includes the following: the goals of the book; a sketch of the nature of phenomenology of religion; an overview of the book’s collaborative interview method; brief summaries of chapters (interviews from ten countries); a discussion of developments in other countries; and a comprehensive bibliography.

Ulf Drobin was a close associate and colleague of Åke Hultkrantz, Louise Bäckman and Per-Arne Berglie. As the following interview will illustrate, Drobin is a firm believer in the neutrality of the concept of Phenomenology of Religion (PoR) as a system for classification of religious phenomena and in its necessity for the scientific studies in religion. In line with Hultkrantz (1970) and several other prominent Scandinavian historians of religion – like William Brede Kristensen (1867–1953) and Geo Widengren (1907–1996) – he also criticizes all attempts to make PoR a matter of philosophical or theological positioning or concern (see Tucket 2016; Widengren 1969, 1972). It is worth mentioning that the History of Religions department at Stockholm University, from its beginning, has been eager to uphold a non-theological profile. Unlike the case at many other Swedish universities, from the early twentieth century religion was studied at Stockholm University from a historical perspective within the faculty of humanities and without connections to either Christian academic theology or to the Church as an institution. This situation still holds today. An early theoretical contribution from the department, that can be seen as an outcome of this explicitly non-theological ambition, was the formulation of analytical concepts that were not laden with Christian connotations. A prominent example here is the system of concepts of the soul which was developed by Arbman and Hultkrantz (Drobin 2016).

This chapter was created in the form of a dialogue between Veikko Anttonen and Teuvo Laitila. Both authors participated as interviewers and interviewees. We met and discussed twice at the main building of the University of Helsinki in October 2017 and February 2018. Being both experts by experience, there was no need to carry out an actual, structured or non-structured, interview. Our contribution is a result of two free-floating conversation sessions over the scope and contents of the chapter and an email exchange of Q&A-type comments in a shared file. Veikko Anttonen retired from his position at the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies at the University of Turku in 2015. Teuvo Laitila has since 2003 taught at the University of Eastern Finland, School of Theology. Anttonen started his academic career at the Department of Comparative Religion at the University of Helsinki in the early 1970s and Laitila in the next decade. Both have been integrated in the Finnish scholarly community of the study of religion for many decades, and also have been active participants in international scholarship. In what follows, Anttonen (in bold type) and Laitila (in regular type) present an overview over what has been called ‘regional phenomenology’ in Finland: its background and an evaluation of the scholarly work of its most prominent practitioners.

Phenomenology of religion started to disappear during the 1960s and 70s in Germany and has remained marginal as a method in the comparative study of religions, with some notable exceptions mentioned in the interviews with Peter Antes and Hubert Seiwert. The two interviewees also address developments in Germany between 1948/9 and 1990 covering what was happening in two nations during the German division and two quite different academic cultures. German language publications of relevance appeared also in other European countries. Revisiting the history of the phenomenology of religion (PoR) in the memory of scholars in German-language contexts thus includes scholars active in Switzerland and Austria and other countries. The interview texts with the commentaries aim to give an overview of the overall situation and the current state of debate. The two interviewees both clearly emphasize in differing ways that they reject, even strongly disapprove of, PoR because of significant flaws. They point out these flaws and recount the academic and political contexts of past debates. Antes is one of the witnesses of the demise of PoR in Germany in the 1970s and has remained a strong defender of the academic study of religions. Seiwert belonged to a group of young students who vehemently criticized PoR in the 1970s. From 1979 to 1994, the year he became professor in Leipzig, he worked at the University of Hannover. An essay with his critique appeared as early as 1977 in the journal Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft (Journal for Missionary Studies and Religious Studies). The essay of the then doctoral student is accompanied by a short supportive introduction by a professor in the field: Peter Antes. In his essay, Seiwert shows, following Karl Popper, that Friedrich Heiler’s (1892–1967) proposition that the cause for the act of transcending the “belief in immortality” cannot be falsified, and therefore does not qualify as a result of an empirically verifiable methodology. This shows, in a nutshell, Hubert Seiwert’s fundamental and critical view of PoR. The interview with Peter Antes took place on 23 February 2018 at his home in Hannover. It was conducted in German. The interview with Hubert Seiwert took place in a series of short e-mail sessions between March and May 2018 and was conducted in English.

I have known Giovanni Casadio and have been familiar with his scholarship for several years now. He is not only a renowned specialist of ancient and comparative religions – among other things – but also a prominent figure in the field of history of religions in Italy and Europe. Casadio has authored a vast number of works on the history of the history of religions and on Italian as well as non-Italian scholars in the realm of Religionswissenschaft (Raffaele Pettazzoni, Ugo Bianchi, Ioan Petru Culianu, Mircea Eliade). His penchant for establishing lines of intellectual genealogies as well as for historiography and scientific biographies made him the ideal candidate for the writing of this interview. This interview’s themes and general planning sprang from a number of conversations held in person between the interviewer and the interviewee mostly in Rome and Leuven (Belgium; the location of EASR 2017 Conference) during the second half of 2017. However, the text as it is presented here has taken shape mostly through phone calls and e-mail interaction between the second half of 2017 and the beginning of 2018.

This chapter consists of two interviews. The first is with Toshimaro Hanazono, a retired professor from the Department of Religious Studies at Tohoku University, which is known among Japanese scholars as a central institution for the study of the phenomenology of religion (PoR). While Hanazono encountered PoR through engagement with European scholarship, German philosophy in particular, the second interviewee, Yoshiko Oda, has taken a radically different route to PoR. She started her graduate study at the Department of Religious Studies at Kyoto University, where scholars focused on German philosophy. However, she then went to the University of Chicago and enrolled in the Divinity School’s area of the History of Religions, which has often been considered to be a North American equivalent to PoR. Having experienced two very different disciplines, she was completely “converted” from the Kyoto School to the Chicago School and has been trying to revalorize J. M. Kitagawa’s history of religions. Tohoku and Kyoto University make two of the seven national universities established before the Second World War. Both interviews were conducted separately in Fall 2016, with Hanazono at Tohoku University and with Oda at the University of Tokyo.

Chin-Hong Chung has consistently emphasized the importance of phenomenology of religion (PoR) and introduced the works of Mircea Eliade to Korea. He has called for scholars of religion to expand beyond the limits of single religious traditions, such as Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism, long before criticisms about the paradigm of world religions were raised. Also, he identified problems with the concept of religion and emphasized that the study of religion should not be confined to that concept. His research has focused primarily on the themes of intellectual honesty and free imagination. The interview was conducted in three sessions, at Prof. Chung’s office in Yongsan District, Seoul, on 21 March, 18 April and 5 June 2018.

PoR has been largely neglected or it is almost universally dominant in Canada, depending on how you define it. In either case, there is little or nothing distinctively Canadian about PoR in Canada. Canadian-born scholars of religion are often trained in and/or work in the USA, and many scholars working in Canadian SoR departments were born and trained in the USA. There is perhaps something distinctive about the ambivalent way that “PoR” is used in Canadian meta-theoretical debates, a point developed in the Commentary, after the interviews below. The interview with Louis Rousseau that follows consists of written responses provided by Rousseau, translated and with footnotes added by Engler. The second interview, with Earle H. Waugh, is a transcribed and edited version of an 80-minute phone interview that took place on 2 March 2018, intercalated with additional written responses, with footnotes by Engler.

This chapter consists of select portions from two separate interviews I conducted by phone and recorded in late 2017 regarding the history, development, and significance of Phenomenology of Religion (PoR), with a special focus on the United States. The first interview, on 8 December, was with Charles H. Long, who spoke from his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The recording of the interview was transcribed by Jamie Gallagher of Veritext Legal Solutions, Mid-Atlantic Region, Philadelphia, PA. The second interview, on 10 November, was with Ivan Strenski, who spoke from his home in Los Angeles, California. The recording of that interview was transcribed by Laura McKee, administrative assistant of the Department of Religious Studies, Lafayette College. The transcripts of both interviews were redacted, arranged and annotated by myself. PoR is but one of any number of the approaches to religious studies that Long and Strenski have critically appraised, including also the historical and comparative approaches, as well as theology.

Denise Cush was at Lancaster University while Ninian Smart (1927–2001) and Eric Sharpe (1933–2000) were there, both major scholars in the Phenomenology of Religion who also changed the way Religious Education was taught in schools in England. Cush had also switched from Theology to Religious Studies and, taking on board many of Ninian Smart’s ideas, went on to become influential in Religious Education. The following interview was conducted at King’s College London on 8 December 2017.

This chapter contains an interview with Jan G. Platvoet, a retired Associate Professor from Leiden University, about the rise and fall of the phenomenology of religion (PoR) in the Netherlands (c.1877–1973). Reviewing the complex history from Tiele and Chantepie de la Saussaye through Van der Leeuw to Bleeker and Waardenburg, Platvoet points out several overlooked facts of crucial importance for the history of the study of religion. As a corrective to Anglophone scholarship Platvoet stresses that Dutch PoR developed independently of and prior to Husserl’s philosophical phenomenology, and he points out that Van der Leeuw only reluctantly accepted the title Phänomenologie der Religion for the German translation of his first introduction to the history of religion. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that there was very little interaction among the Dutch phenomenologists of religion, and that both Van der Leeuw and Waardenburg, despite their international fame, were academically isolated figures in the Netherlands where they had little influence and no academic heirs. The absence of a “Dutch school” made possible the rapid collapse of Dutch PoR during the 1970s. Platvoet never practised PoR himself, but joined the anthropologically inspired assault on this approach that was launched by Theo van Baaren and others in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Within his own generation, Platvoet has been the one to most passionately promote a new, strictly secular and methodologically agnostic comparative science of religion(s) in the Netherlands. The interview took place in English in Jan Platvoet’s home in Bunnik on 20 June 2018.

The Afterword offers a summative overview of the views of the phenomenology of religion (PoR), as presented by interviewers from ten countries, using three scales or axes. This is supplemented by an analysis of PoR’s changing position in international religious studies conferences. These findings help to explain the interviewees’ varied and ambivalent reactions to PoR.

The phenomenology of religion is a branch of religious study that claims to represent the core of the study of religion as an autonomous discipline. First used as a term by the Dutch scholar Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, it was developed by Gerdardus van der Leeuw in the 1930s and 40s, became popular in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently met severe criticism, virtually disappearing by the beginning of the twenty-first century. This volume investigates how the phenomenology of religion was accepted and developed in different national contexts. It consists of interviews with senior scholars, who are experts on the development of the phenomenology of religion in their countries, along with commentary and analysis. It examines the reasons why it disappeared so abruptly in each country and reveals how scholars of religion currently evaluate the phenomenology of religion in their countries.

The phenomenology of religion is a branch of religious study that claims to represent the core of the study of religion as an autonomous discipline. First used as a term by the Dutch scholar Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, it was developed by Gerdardus van der Leeuw in the 1930s and 40s, became popular in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently met severe criticism, virtually disappearing by the beginning of the twenty-first century. This volume investigates how the phenomenology of religion was accepted and developed in different national contexts. It consists of interviews with senior scholars, who are experts on the development of the phenomenology of religion in their countries, along with commentary and analysis. It examines the reasons why it disappeared so abruptly in each country and reveals how scholars of religion currently evaluate the phenomenology of religion in their countries.

The phenomenology of religion is a branch of religious study that claims to represent the core of the study of religion as an autonomous discipline. First used as a term by the Dutch scholar Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, it was developed by Gerdardus van der Leeuw in the 1930s and 40s, became popular in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently met severe criticism, virtually disappearing by the beginning of the twenty-first century. This volume investigates how the phenomenology of religion was accepted and developed in different national contexts. It consists of interviews with senior scholars, who are experts on the development of the phenomenology of religion in their countries, along with commentary and analysis. It examines the reasons why it disappeared so abruptly in each country and reveals how scholars of religion currently evaluate the phenomenology of religion in their countries.

The phenomenology of religion is a branch of religious study that claims to represent the core of the study of religion as an autonomous discipline. First used as a term by the Dutch scholar Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, it was developed by Gerdardus van der Leeuw in the 1930s and 40s, became popular in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently met severe criticism, virtually disappearing by the beginning of the twenty-first century. This volume investigates how the phenomenology of religion was accepted and developed in different national contexts. It consists of interviews with senior scholars, who are experts on the development of the phenomenology of religion in their countries, along with commentary and analysis. It examines the reasons why it disappeared so abruptly in each country and reveals how scholars of religion currently evaluate the phenomenology of religion in their countries.