Portrait

Abstract

I wish I had been present at the 1993 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) when Professor Eileen Barker delivered her subversive presidential address: “The Scientific Study of Religion? You Must Be Joking!” I imagine that not all audience members were delighted. The address lives up to its billing, driving a cart and horses through pervasive positivistic assumptions in the study of religion and ushering in a very different approach. I will not pretend that it changed my life the first time I read it, but I have gone back to it time and again, and it continues to illuminate and inspire.