Comparative religion

Comparative religion is the study of religious traditions side by side, attending to similarities and differences in belief, practice, text and experience. As a modern academic discipline it was founded in the nineteenth century, above all by Friedrich Max Müller, who called it the “science of religion” and argued, adapting a saying of Goethe’s about languages, that one who knows only one religion knows none.

The World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 brought representatives of many traditions together, and in the twentieth century scholars such as Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade and Wilfred Cantwell Smith sought patterns and structures common to religions. Comparative study made the world’s scriptures available in translation, and gave rise to the comparative study of mysticism.

Later scholars criticized the older comparisons for assuming Christian categories, for neglecting history and context, and for producing similarities by selection. Comparison has continued, more modestly, with closer attention to difference.