Colloquium: Does autonomy entail theology? Autonomy, legitimacy, and the study of religion

Donald Wiebe and other theorists have challenged the doctrine of the autonomy of religion as an intrusion of confessional claims upon non-theological, social scientific study of the subject. This article contends that such criticisms (1) fail to appreciate the diversity of ways in which autonomy has been affirmed by classic theorists; (2) fail to notice that even where confessionalism serves as motive, it does not provide the grounds for such affirmations; (3) fail to see that a legitimate claim of autonomy can be made to rest, axiomatically, on humanistic assumptions no different from those that undergird other disciplines in the academy; and (4) fail to see that overagainst, say, natural scientific explanation, social science itself must make similarly axiomatic claims to autonomy.