A case of misrepresentation: James L. Cox and Steven J. Sutcliffe, "Religious studies in Scotland: A persistent tension with divinity" [Religion 36 (1) (March 2006) 1e28]: A response from Religion at Stirling

Citation

Fitzgerald T, Hass AW, Jasper A, Darroch F, Roberts R, King R & Carette J (2007) A case of misrepresentation: James L. Cox and Steven J. Sutcliffe, "Religious studies in Scotland: A persistent tension with divinity" [Religion 36 (1) (March 2006) 1e28]: A response from Religion at Stirling. Religion, 37 (4), pp. 333-337.

Abstract
A PhD student1 in our department who has a background in classical studies and is now researching the use of the World Wide Web by pagan groups was the first to see this survey on religious studies in Scotland. She felt worried at the time by the way the article misrepresented what we did at Stirling. Coming from another country to do postgraduate studies in religion here, she felt people in her country reading this journal would be given a false impression that could affect her career prospects. In particular the article stated that the typical orientation of the department at Stirling was 'traditional textual-hermeneutical methodologies of Theology and Divinity' when she, and subsequently the rest of us, felt this bore little relation to the breadth of what was actually being taught. Why was there no mention of the interdisciplinarity of our approach or the centrality of feminist, critical and postcolonial theory? Overall we felt there had been too little investigation of the kinds of modules which were actually being offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, or of the kinds of research and publications that members of the department were producing, including Fiona Darroch e not mentioned at all in the report e who at that time was and still is researching and teaching Caribbean literature and religion.

Keywords
Affect; career; Countries; LEVEL; levels; LITERATURE; MEMBER; MEMBERS; Methodology; Orientation; PEOPLE; prospects; Reading; RELIGION; Research; Scotland; Stirling; survey; TEACHING; Theories; THEORY; time; WHO; WORLD; World Wide Web

Journal
Religion: Volume 37, Issue 4

People

Dr Fiona Darroch

Lecturer, Literature and Languages - Division

Dr Andrew Hass

Reader, Religion