This paper discusses the importance of critical self-reflection in pedagogy and the study of religion. It draws on William Paden's work on "new comparativism" and the need for self-awareness of one's own biases and perspectives. The paper argues that simply grappling with theoretical texts is not enough for students - they must also critically reflect on how their own views and context shape their understanding. It suggests using Paden's approach to interpret the relationship between student and text, recognizing how the student's context is just as important to understand as the context of the text. This process of critical self-reflection helps students move beyond an initial awareness of themselves to develop a broader understanding informed by consideration of different perspectives

1. “I AM MYSELF ALONE!”
The Role of Critical Self-Reflexivity in
Pedagogy and the Study of Religion
SCOTT W. HODGMAN
In this paper, I would like to draw our attention to William Paden’s emphasis on critical
self-reflexivity in “Elements of a New Comparativism.” The implications of critical self-reflexivity
are broader than the comparative study of religion. In fact, drawing on Paden’s Interpreting the
Sacred its place in the overall study of religion is easily seen. Thereby, I will argue for the
importance of this factor of reflexivity in a university classroom which deals with the theories and
methods for the study of religion. Ultimately, it is incumbent that a theories of religion course—
whether through texts chosen, professorial provocation, or classroom discussion—
communicates the value of critical self-reflexivity to its students. Otherwise, the value and
meaning of such a class are lost in a miasma of uncritically self-conscious conversations.
Consequently, this paper will unfold in two stages. First, issues dealing with theories of learning
and the event where learning breaks down. Subsequently, this paper will examine pedagogy as
an interlocutor in the learning event when learning breaks down..
In “Elements of a New Comparativism,” Paden brings to the fore the importance of
critical self-awareness in relation to “new comparativism.” While this discussion of critical self-
reflexivity only occupies a single paragraph in his conclusion, the entire essay points to its
importance. Paden understands and notes this explicitly when he tells us that, “This approach
[new comparativism] unavoidably involves the factor of reflexivity.” For Paden, critical self-1
reflexivity is vital if the comparative study of religion is intended to be grounded in responsible
scholarship. This factor of reflexivity involves:
William Paden, “Elements of a New Comparativism” A Magic Still Dwells, eds. Kimberly C. Patton and1
Benjamin C. Ray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 190.
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2. Self-awareness of the role of the comparativist as enculterated, classifying, and
purposive subject (which does not mean that the patterns are fictions without
substance); a clearer sense of the process and practice of selectivity; and
exploratory as multileveled rather than hegemonic sense of the pursuit of
knowledge; the need for ongoing category critique; and the production of new or
revisionary thematic collocations.2
Here we can introduce the student of religion. Paden’s approach to “new comparativism” is just
as applicable to a student’s approach to methodological and theoretical texts on the study of
religion. Throughout this paper where Paden suggests the interpreter of religious phenomena, I
will suggest the student of religion involved in the study of methods and theories (hereafter the
student). Additionally, where Paden introduces the idea of religious phenomena or data, I will
suggest the texts that theories students study for the purpose of inculcating critical method in his
or her study of religion (hereafter texts).
At this point in the paper, why it is necessary to make issue of this might not be obvious.
Some might argue that by virtue of grappling with texts any student will surely become aware of
his or her biases associated with his or her situation as an interpreter of those selfsame texts. I
do not doubt this point in theories of learning. The question I put forth is whether or not this self-
awareness caused by grappling with texts is critical. Here an allusion to William James and
Paden’s related commentary might serve to underscore my point. James humorously but
insightfully notes,
A crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it
without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. ‘I am no such
thing,’ it would say; ‘I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.’3
For the purpose of his essay, Paden observes that the crustacean metaphor “points not to
dehumanization, recurrence of objectivism, or single-theory, scientistic totalization, but rather to
Ibid., 190.2
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Random House, 1902), 10.3
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3. liberation from the myopia of single-culture analysis and to an acknowledgement of the
naturalness of structural variety of religious life on the planet.” Further, “The crab’s point of4
view, that of a single religious world, does not do this.” Applying this commentary to our paper,5
the student (without any intention to dehumanize) is like the crab confronted with classification
as a crustacean. When the student is confronted with a text, and grapples with its
methodologies and implications she or he may become aware of their own contextual
locatedness. Similar to the crabs’ assertion “I AM MYSELF,” this awareness does nothing more
than locate the student in relation to the text. The project of critically reflecting on this self-
awareness is a further step in the learning process not necessarily evinced by grappling with the
texts’ methodologies and implications. The realization of agreement or disagreement, attraction
or repulsion, clear understanding or unnamable confusion to a particular theoretical text must be
followed by critical questions. What does it mean that I have this reaction to the texts under
discussion? What does it say about my own locatedness contextually? How might I see through
this locatedness to a broader view of the study of religion suggested by Paden (offered in
contrast to the myopia of the crab, so to speak)? In short, how does the student move beyond
his or her personal reaction to a critical place of self-awareness? Here, I strongly suggest that
critical self-reflection is an important part of the learning process and pedagogy in a class that
focuses on methods and theories for the study of religion.
Given this problem, let us turn to William Paden’s Interpreting the Sacred. Here, I believe
we can unearth creative (theoretical) responses to the pedagogical issue of the student’s critical
self-reflection. In Interpreting the Sacred, Paden offers an interesting approach to context,
specifically the context surrounding and locating religious phenomenaand the interpreter of
religious phenomena, this is secondary to his attention to methods (what Paden most often
terms “lenses”) and the contexts they impose on data. At this juncture, I suggest a reading of
Paden that substitutes the student for the interpreter of religious phenomena and the text for the
religious phenomena itself. In this way, we can extrapolate an approach to critical self-reflection.
Paden, “Elements of a New Comparativism,” 189.4
Ibid., 189.5
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4. This represents one (of many possible) approach(es) to this issue of negotiating the theories
inherent context, thereby arriving at the necessary factor of reflexivity required for responsible
scholarship.
An interesting place to start addressing the problem is the relationship between the
student and the texts. Returning to our analogue of Paden’s interpreter and things interpreted,
“To reflect upon interpretations is to identify its purposes, its settings, and its selections. It is to
be attentive to the reciprocal relationship between the interpreter’s world and the choices of
religious thing interpreted.” When we reflect upon inculcation of theories and methods, it is6
incumbent we attend to the relationship the student develops with the text. If the relationship
expresses meaning by the inculcation of critical theory, subsequently the context of the student
is just as important as the context of the text under scrutiny. Following Paden, we can even go
so far as to say unless the student’s context is critically fathomed as well as the texts’ context,
then, the text itself is not seen. Additionally, if the text remains closed because of a student’s
inability to fathom the student’s own context, it follows that he or she will scarcely be able to
critically reflect on his or her own context. Following my agenda of replacing the interpreter with
the student, and the thing interpreted with the study of theoretical texts, I ground my proposal in
the following observation by Paden. “Yet unless we fathom the shifting, defining role of context,
we can scarcely begin to understand what we are doing when we talk about religion. Unless we
see the contexts of other views, we cannot see their text, and we will scarcely be self-conscious
of our own.” Of course this is not a static process whereby a single iteration of student to text7
discloses the critical self-awareness. The process is dialogical and reciprocal. The encounter
sparks a moment of self-awareness akin to the crab’s “I am MYSELF alone.” The task becomes,
as Paden suggests, moving past the myopic self-awareness, through critical self-reflection, to a
wider critical self-awareness and its repercussions on reading a text.
A number of issues, though, complicate this process. Whether or not the theories
student represents an institution or school of thought or whether he or she reads from a
William Paden, Interpreting the Sacred (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003, revised edition), 123.6
Ibid., 115.7
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5. noninstitutional place requires consideration. This point of differentiation comes from Paden’s
Interpreting the Sacred. “Sometimes the interpreter simply represents an institution or school of
thought. Here the operative context is not personal or biographic factors, but the linguistic
conventions or genres of the institutions” And, “At the same time, interpreting from
noninstitutional positions often brings biographical contexts into play.” Many students come to8
the subject matter unformed or uniformed and this preferences a noninstitutional locatedness.
Therefore, the operative context in the student’s reading is personal and biographical. This
returns us once again to Paden’s discussion of the situation of the interpreter of religious
phenomena. The encounter sparking self-awareness usually speaks to the personal and9
biographic. This complicates the process on many fronts. Particularly, if the student’s context
represents an institution or school of thought, most likely, critical reflection of the context
associated with the method is available. This availability allows an easy jumpstart to the10
movement from self-awareness to critical self-reflection. On the other hand, there is no such
jumpstart for the contextual factors that are personal and biographic. The analogy of our crab
comes to bear on this. The crab evinces a moment of self awareness, “I am MYSELF alone,”
but there is no external source (text) the crab can appeal to in order to understand its
indignation. The post-position emphatic “alone,” to some extent, excludes what other crabs
might have to say about the whole crustacean affair. Returning to our student, there is no
singular source of authority to which he or she can appeal for navigating the tricky byways of
self-reflection. Because of this, pedagogy is all the more important as the means for
jumpstarting the critical self-reflection that can move a student out of the myopic position
attested to by the crab.
The role of pedagogy as facilitator becomes paramount; indeed, it assumes the role of
mediator between the texts and the student’s maturing self-awareness. Returning our
discussion to Paden’s Interpreting the Sacred, a critical question arises that speaks precisely to
Ibid., 115.8
Ibid., 115.9
For example, if a theories student approached a theoretical text from the Harvard or Chicago styles.10
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6. this point. “There are countless interpretations of religion, but to most readers they are
completely irrelevant because they are geared to some audience other than themselves. Rows
and rows of religion books sit side by side on libraries’ shelves, mutually impertinent to each
other’s form of knowledge. They belong to different interpretive communities, different circles of
conversation.” Granted, Paden is here speaking to the variety of texts dealing with the topic of11
religion. Nonetheless, in a class on the methods and theories for the study of religion, this is the
very situation facing the student. When responsiveness is lacking due to flagging interest or
levels of comprehension (as Paden points out the audience supplies these cues), or there is
resistance to engaging a text (again, as Paden points out many readers view texts as not
belonging to their conversation), pedagogy must rise to the occasion. Only after the texts are
shown to be pertinent to the student—that is, there is something meaningful in them—can the
lens of critical examination focus on the student’s own context. When dialogue breaks down
between the text and the student, it is important for the student to see she or he is part of that
breakdown. Here, I assert, that can only happen after she or he realizes “the problem” resides in
her or his own context in dialogue with the text’s context. In this instance, critical self-reflection
requires first that the object sparking self-awareness (returning to our crab the label of
crustacean as it precipitates the response “I am MYSELF alone”) is valuable. However, this
object is valuable as it illuminates the theories student’s contextual locatedness as well.
This point is intimately woven into the so-called hermeneutical circle. This circle informs
us “that what we say about any object is already interwoven with what we have asked and
assumed about it. The situation of the interpreter already preconditions the possible range or
kind of religion that will be selected and seen.” Here I draw on Paden’s discussion of12
interpreting religious phenomena; however, it speaks meaningfully to our discussion of
reflexivity. Hypothetically posed, if a text is accepted as meaningful by the majority of students
present but that same text is either irrelevant or at odds with the student’s understanding of the
study of religion, the hermeneutical circle encourages critical self-reflection by attending to the
Ibid., 117.11
Ibid., 116.12
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7. role the student plays in the of the theoretical text. The self awareness generated by the
encountered text crosses over into the realm of critical self-reflection when the student sees his
or her reaction (an experience of self-awareness) as the product of the text and his or her own
context. If pedagogy has adequately communicated the value of the text to the audience (the
student of religion), then it can and should move the discussion towards critical self-reflection.
Otherwise, as Paden intimates, the text is not seen. This is the context for reflexivity introduced
at the beginning of this paper and the idea of a non-hegemonic pursuit of knowledge. The study
of religion requires this critical reflexivity.
Theories and methods for the study of religion are the logical starting point for cultivating
critical reflexivity. More to point, it is absolutely necessary that critical self-reflection begin with
the study of methods and theories. As much as possible, this insures that critical self-reflection
is part and parcel to the growth and maturation of the student into a scholar of religion.
Returning one last time to Paden’s Interpreting the Sacred,
In a conceptual universe that is both plural and moving, where interpretation itself
becomes the subject matter, any interpreter of interpretation will need to be
versatile and conceptually multilingual. Applied to the understanding of religion,
the capacity to see through many eyes and from many viewpoints—a capacity
that is not necessarily tantamount to agreeing with the theories based on those
viewpoints—would seem to be indispensable. The multiplicity of interpretive
frames is not only a fact of our public life and social coexistence, but inevitably a
revelation of the many-faceted nature of the subject matter itself.13
The versatility and multilingual conceptuality pointed to by Paden requires critical self-reflection
in the context in which the student is situated. The ability to move in and out of viewpoints
stands or falls on this critical reflexivity. As we noted early on in this paper, it is an unavoidable
aspect of responsible scholarship. Consequently, it is a necessary part of any study on methods
and theories.
Ibid., 124.13
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