The earliest scholarly studies of religion as a distinct subject occurred in and were shaped by the broader conditions of Western modernitythe philosophical legacies of the Enlightenment, the engagement of Western thinkers with religious otherness, and the sociopolitical contexts of the American and French revolutions. These intellectual, cultural, and political conditions challenged the established traditions of knowledge and social institutions, religion and religious authority in particular.Although the dominant religious institutions in Western societies, and many of their respective theologians, rejected the earliest cha(lle)nges of modernity philosophically and politically, a number of theologians entered a dialogue with it. They conversed with and responded to the