The Indian Challenge: Indology and New Conceptions of Christianity as ‘Religion’ at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This chapter argues that religion as a universal concept was not a European invention but had a global history. In the late-nineteenth century, a new understanding of ‘religion’(This contribution uses terms like ‘religion’, ‘science’, ‘history’, or ‘Europe’ not as ontological self-evident entities and unchangeable concepts. They are rather understood in a strictly historical sense—as names produced and used within a global discourse) emerged as a reaction against a physiological materialism that criticized ‘religion’ in the name of ‘science’. This new understanding regarded religion as an inner experience differing from ‘science’. Simultaneously, colonial knowledge production and the new importance of ‘history’ in the humanities led to the formation of a general religious history including Christianity. Consequently, religious reformers in all parts of the world started to define their traditions as ‘religion’ to prove their accordance with ‘science’. Western intellectuals were turning to Buddhism, and later a neo-Vedantic form of Hinduism, as decidedly scientific religions, and as historical evidence for their critique of Christianity. In this context, Christian theologians were challenged to prove the truth claims of Christianity in the new arena of the general religious history. Ernst Troeltsch, who was at the centre of this debate, turned to the German Indologist Hermann Oldenberg to substantiate his new conception of Christianity. This chapter shows that Troeltsch and Oldenberg were part of a global discourse on religion in which Buddhism was a challenge for Christian scholars.