| Abstract:
The scientific study of religion is one aspect of religious sudies that
investigates religious behaviors and experiences within an emprical
framework. Ideologocal surround methodologies represent an empirical
approach to religious studies that is based upon a "post - postmodern"
foundation. Such methodologies were developed as a reactoin against
the reductionism of modernism and the extreme relativism of
postmodern pluralism. Within these methodologies, conceptualizations
of religious behavior and experience maintained by the sdentific
observer and by the religious subject who is observed are brought into
"dialogue" within an ideological surround. The result is a dialectical
empiricism among perspectives on religion, These empirical
methodological presumptions of any conceptualizations and research
findings about religion, and thus reveal the limitations and unique vision
of all perspectives. The Ideological Surround Model promotes a
pluralistic, not a single and authoritative rationality; a balanced, though
not an unbiased objectivity; an empirica, and not just a conceptual
dialectics; and an empirical, and not personal and disorganized
hermeneutics. By empirically clarifying the bias of all perspectives on
religion, this methodology explores the possibility of peace, democracy,
and integration among perspectives. In this articJe, empirical studies of
religion based on this model are reviewed.
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