Talk:Religious Studies and Theology 2018-2019

QUESTION: Move Theology jobs to a different page?
I've received a request to move theology jobs to a different page this year. Since traditionally these jobs have always been posted on the Religious Studies page, I'd like to hear from users on the market this year about whether this would be desirable. If you have feelings about this one way or another, please leave a note below. Thanks. --Una74 (talk) 18:59, July 16, 2018 (UTC)


 * My thought is, what does it hurt to have them together? There are some folks for whom both are relevant, and it’s not like most of the RS positions don’t have a particular specialty you are going to have to scroll to check anyhow. I’m in favor of not confusing people by changing it from previous years. Thanks. --Applicant2019


 * I agree with Applicant2019. Why change something that works. Most of the jobs on this board are irrelevant for most of us, but that in itself is not enough reason to remove them. I see theology as part of the RS field, so I favor keeping it. -J2b2


 * I agree with leaving it. Theology is part of religious studies and I'd rather not have to check both pages regularly. Thanks.
 * I agree with the others. Creating a separate theology page would simply mean that I now have 2 pages to check regularly. Why not just keep them together?


 * I would like to see them seperate.


 * I'm not a theologian, so I have to look through the entire page to find the religious studies jobs, and it's a headache to have to look through it every time to see what was added, when less than half the jobs on here are relevant to me. Leaving them together is like having Anthropology and Sociology be on the same page. They're different fields, so it would be so much more convenient to have two different pages for them.
 * Putting theology jobs with religious studies is like putting creationism gigs in biology.
 * Yep, I figured this was the sentiment behind this request.


 * Cultural Anth., Linguistic Anth., and Archaeology are seperate pages.


 * FOLLOW-UP: So obviously views are pretty mixed here so far. Thanks to everyone for chiming in so far - I'm still interested in hearing from more people if they care to contribute. I can make one suggestion that might help to navigate the page if we do keep everything together: use COMMAND + F to enable a word search function on your browser. That way you can enter THEOLOGY or whatever you want to find and go to those posts more quickly without needing to scroll through everything. I deal with a lot of large pages on this wiki all the time and I find this search really helps. --Una74 (talk) 20:36, July 17, 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem with this is that search committees come up with position titles. For example, "religious material cultures," or "religion and science," or "religious foodways." We can't anticipate them, so we have to look through everything. And in doing so, we have to also look through an entire other field.
 * ALSO: using the RSS Feed above or subscribing with an RSS reader helps keep track of updates to this page and should also save the trouble of needing to scroll through everything to find what's new. There are lots of free RSS readers out there (https://feedly.com/ is a good one); here's the link to subscribe for updates to this page: http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Religious_Studies_2018-2019?feed=rss&action=history --Una74 (talk) 20:54, July 17, 2018 (UTC)
 * This seems like a LOT of trouble to go through just to keep these two fields in the same wiki page. It's starting to seem political.


 * I too would like theology to be on a separate page, in order to streamline this page. Thank you.


 * I too would like them sepearte. It's very inconvenient to have to scroll through so many non-religious studies jobs to find non-theology jobs.


 * I also vote to have a seperate page, but a compromise may be reached to subdivide the Religious Studies Wiki, like the History Wiki. (I'd also vote for renaming the whole page Religious Studies and Theology if we're going to keep the Theology jobs here. Without disparaging anybody, these have largely become seperate disciplines. And Theology is almost exclusively Christian Theology; when's the last time you saw a job for constructive Buddhist thought posted here? But this is a larger issue that may be best left for next year's Wiki.)

So here's the issue: There's one camp that sees theology as a completely separate field, doing very different work from religious studies. And as the person above mentioned, it's exclusively Christian. In this camp, we are historians, social scientists, etc. On the other hand, theologians insist on being part of religious studies because it gives them legitimacy as an academic discipline and is the reason why they insist on staying on this page. These are the ongoing politics of the field, #tbt to AAR/SBL issues. So one camp is invested in their separation, another is invested in their equivalence. Said theologians are bright, insightful, and accomplished individuals and we have much to learn from them. But theology is not religious studies, and it will never be.

Now, having to scroll through so many theology/div school/seminary jobs is just damn annoying and inconvenient and it's ridiculous that theologians are bringing these politics to a space that is the site of all of the anxiety, precarity, and depression of the religious studies job market. It's disappointing that theologians aren't willing to make this process any easier.
 * Wow, so fucking salty. I've never met a theologian who gave a rat's ass about being considered a religious studies scholar. In fact, most theologians I know prefer to distance themselves from religious studies. The problem isn't these (imaginary) theologians fighting to keeping the two disciplines united. The problem is the ACTUAL REALITY OF ACADEMIA, which is not going to change overnight. What I mean is that many theology positions are offered by departments that call themselves "Department of Religion" or "Department of Religious Studies" (Princeton University, Baylor, etc.). Then you've also got people who are not theology professors per se, yet they're doing constructive theology and/or philosophy of religion, and they're in RELIGIOUS STUDIES departments (e.g. Florida State). To complicate matters even further, you've got institutions that have BOTH religion departments AND divinity schools (Harvard, Duke). Some professors hold joint appointments in both departments. And there's plenty of inexplicable crossover, too. For example, J. Kameron Carter, who previously held a position in theology at Duke Divinity School, just got hired at Indiana University as a professor of religious studies. MORAL OF THE STORY: Regardless of your own personal opinion, and regardless of whether theologians do or do not care to be afilliated with religious studies scholars, the reality in academia is that these boundaries can be very fuzzy. And that gets reflected in job postings. Some religious studies positions are actually well suited to someone with a theology PhD. By the same token, sometimes theology departments want to hire someone with training in religious studies. So we need to discuss this question as a practical matter, without projecting our own bullshit onto everyone else. There may very well be a case to be made for separating the job wiki postings, but we'd need to delineate some clear principles first.
 * Agree with Mr. Salty on the tone of this discussion and the reality of the academic scene, and might prefer the archival historian's suggested solution below. Mr. "Two Camps" gives with one hand and takes way with the other. Theologians are "intelligent" conversation partners, but (wink, wink) let's be honest, they need us RS people to confer real scholarly legitimacy upon them. (Implication: they have none, otherwise.) Ok, but let's not debate the Wissenschaftlichkeit of theology here today. This is really just a debate over expediency: some, who can/are willing to look for jobs in either type of field/department, find it convenient to have all listings on one page. Others, who don't want to scroll past unicornology postings, find it convenient to have RS postings by themselves. If there's any hidden motives at work here, it's with those who insist on the "purity" of their field, not those needily grasping for undeserved legitimacy. Finally, the job search is anxiety ridden for EVERYONE, so please don't give us this crap about theologians making it harder for you. This is a boutique career, and we all knew that going in. It's no different from heading to Hollywood to be an actor. But, hey, if you want an employer to throw a job at you, there's a shortage of truck drivers in the nation. It's hard work that we all depend on. And the pay's probably better.
 * Completely agree on the fuzziness. But it's a problem that needs to be solved, not a justification for equating two ENTIRELY different fields.


 * As an archival historian, I have never found scrolling on this wiki to be a burdensome labor.  As a historian of religions employed in a religious studies department, but with training in a divinity school and in the study of religion at the undergrad and grad level, it is the case that the complicated relationship between Theology and Religious Studies means that many candidates can find employment in a variety of department/program homes/arrangements.  And the varieties of religion departments nationally make space for people with training in ethics and theology to offer constructive work rooted/seriously engaged in religious traditions.  Several divinity schools incorporate anthropologists/archaeologists/sociologists of religion, working in non-Christian religions, in addition to people whose work incorporates critical theories of race/religion/gender/sexuality/class, while maintaining fluid connections with religion departments.  Many of these hires are not expected to have confessional affilations with the tradition(s) they study, although it is true that "theology" generally refers to one of many Christian traditions.  In short, the job market at this point might be a (constructive) mess that mirrors the posting arrangment on this page.  I don't know if there is enough feedback on this page yet to suggest that there are "camps" in either position, but perhaps subdivisions on this page, with the ability to keyword search as mentioned above, would be the least politically aggressive resolution.

Hi y'all. So this is weird. Theology is a much more legit field than religious studies, and that's a fact. But theology is not religious studies. What's the insistence on keeping their job posts together. These are job posts. Separating them is not a "politically aggressive solution," but a very practical one. So what's up with the drama? It feels like keeping them together, however, is a politically aggressive solution.

The first job post, right under this, is the perfect example. The job posting is in the Duke Divinity School, not the Religious Studies Department. Boom. Different. Separate.


 * Overly simplistic: We have jobs listed below that are housed in Departments of Theology and Religion. So which is it then, by your measure?

Isn't this an ACADEMIC jobs wiki?! Why does theology even have a page?


 * LOL I'm more mad about having to scroll through this long series of diatribes (&c.) to get to the postings than I am about the legitimacy of my discipline (theology) being undermined.

I have been perusing this page for at least the past 7 or so years and have found it very useful and usually very cordial. It has not been a venue for fighting ideological battles over what counts as 'religious studies' or 'theology' and so on - something the fields themselves cannot even agree on. I hope that tone and spirit can endure. The job process is fraught enough without this page becoming a site for conflict. I do not think it makes sense to creat separate pages nor do I think doing so is practical. Many jobs could easily fit in the category of both theology and religious studies. Many jobs in theology departments or divinity schools or seminaries are of interest to those with PhD's from religion departments. (The reverse is true as well, to some extent.) That Duke job, for example, will surely attract interest from countless folks who study Hebrew Bible, whether they are from a theology department or not. Some religion departments (e.g. UVA) offer degrees and hire in theology. Some non-theology jobs in religion departments are at schools that require adherence to a statement of faith (e.g. Calvin) or support of a mission statement (e.g. Villanova). Jobs at Chicago or Harvard, where there are no departments of religion, are in schools of Divinity - does that automatically make them theology jobs? Who is going to decide how to do all the sorting? What criteria would be used? How will it not be controversial? The point of this page is to be useful to individual candidates. For anyone, only a very small fraction of what is posted will be relevant and often that will not fall out across neat theology vs. religious studies lines, insofar as those lines can even be drawn. Often one will discover some surprising job description that is of interest that one would might otherwise have missed or dismissed. The best approach is to search with the relevant key words. Given the structure of religion and theology alike, at most there is only ever a handful of jobs for which a given candidate could truly be competitive. Wouldn't you rather err in the direction of coming across some possibility you might otherwise have missed than missing something that might have been the job you would have gotten? Like the AAR itself, this page has long been a big tent for academic engagement with religion - theological and otherwise. Let's keep it that way and not let this devolve into what would be an impractical and inevitably (and interminably) controversial effort at policing, one for which the moderator didn't sign up and for which none of us is equipped.


 * This is insane.


 * All right. So this is not my field and I'm not qualified to adjudicate among these various claims. I was asked about the possibility of splitting up the pages, so I put the question to users to see if we could find a consensus. So far, I'm not seeing that emerge, so I'm going to stick with the status quo for this page for now. I'm open to subdividing the page as a compromise, as several have suggested above, but, again, not sure I feel qualified to make decisions about what goes in what section, given "fuzziness" others have raised (and also, again, because this isn't my field). If anyone feels like suggesting perimeters for subdivisions, I'm open to this. If a consensus does eventually emerge, we can revisit the topic. Please feel free to carry on the discussion; I'm just moving here so discussion is less disruptive. --Una74 (talk) 23:28, July 21, 2018 (UTC)