Thursday, May 21, 2009

Has American academia begun to accept Traditionalism?

Once again, Traditionalism has come to mainstream academic attention. Generally, when this happens, the result is clear rejection--but this time time the rejection was rather more cautious than usual.

Professor James Cutsinger reports that an outside review team noted the presence of two perennialists at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina, and stated "as a committee we have no intellectual issue with perennialism per se," before making rather clear their reservations in practice about what they called a "somewhat esoteric approach to religion that is of interest primarily to a small and committed group of followers."

In comparison with previous rejections, this might even be seen as a sort of grudging acceptance.

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