religious_studies

A Guide to Writing in

RELIGIOUS STUDIES

F A Y E H A L P E R N

T H O M A S A . L E W I S

A N N E M O N I U S

R O B E R T O R S I

C H R I S T O P H E R W H I T E

Acknowledgments

This guide is the result of a collaborative effort among several faculty members: Christopher

White, who initiated the project while serving as the Head Tutor of Religious Studies; Faye

Halpern of the Harvard Writing Project; and Professors Thomas A. Lewis (Study of Religion and

Divinity School), Anne Monius (Divinity School), and Robert Orsi (Study of Religion and Divinity

School). Thanks also to Tom Jehn of the Harvard Writing Project and Nancy Sommers, Sosland

Director of Expository Writing, for their assistance.

The guide was made possible by a Gordon Gray Faculty Grant for Writing Pedagogy.

Contents

Introduction 5

P A R T I

Generating Questions 7

Outlining and Freewriting 9

P A R T I I

Thesis 13

Motive 16

The Body 18

Using and Interpreting Textual Evidence 18

Anticipating and Refuting Counterarguments 21

Using Topic Sentences and Signposts 23

Concluding Your Essay 23

A Checklist for Successful Writing 25

P A R T I I I

Using Historical Methods in the Study of Religion 27

Writing a Philosophical Paper in Religion 29

Writing a Comparative Religion Paper 33

Resources for Writers 35

Introduction

This guide began as a pledge by your professors to think about why we assign

writing. We should not assign essays just because our professors did; students

should not write essays just to fulﬁ ll requirements. Although a small portion

of the writing we assign has the simple function of making sure you know the

material, the majority of the writing you do requires more than summary. We

want you to engage and argue with the sources you are reading. We want you

to take ideas in new directions. Some of what follows might look formulaic.

But these guidelines are actually less constraining than the ﬁ ve-paragraph

formula you might have learned in high school. We provide them here as a

template from which you can make your own essays. It is the template we use

when launching our own essays, so we know it can work.

A Guide to Writing | 5

Part 1: Strategies for Getting Started

G E N E R A T I N G Q U E S T I O N S

One might think that a good essay gives the sense that there is nothing the

author does not know. In fact, most good essays begin with an honest question

or set of related questions (which sometimes appear in the actual essay), ques-

tions that genuinely puzzle and interest the author-and, one can presume, the

reader. When beginning to think about your paper topic, one of the ﬁ rst things

you should do is ﬁ nd a good question. If you ﬁ nd the right question, you will

need every page you have been allotted to answer it sufﬁ ciently.

So far, we have been assuming that you will be the generator of the question

that founds your essay, but quite often you will be given the question your

essay should address.

Example: “First Writing Assignment: On the basis of a close read-

ing of A Life of Jonathan Mitchell, analyze Mitchell’s ways of thinking

theologically about the two sacraments. Do his worries about the

sacraments suggest that the “Congregational” system was coming

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W H A T M A K E S A G O O D Q U E S T I O N ?

1) A good question asks “how” or “why” rather than “what”:

Example: “How does the idea of original sin contribute to

Augustine’s overall vision?”

Example: “Why should one choose to believe in religious pluralism

over religious exclusivism?”

Not: “Is it true that the Puritans engaged in rigorous self-reﬂ ection?”

(Resulting essay: “Yes.”)

Not: “What does Jonathan Mitchell say about the sacraments?”

2) A good question leads you back into the evidence (data) you

have available:

Example: “Why does Durkheim spend so much time making

distinctions in this text?”

Not: “How has Christianity changed in the past ﬁ ve centuries?”

(This would require a whole library to answer)

Not: “What kind of religious practice did prehistoric peoples engage in?”

(By deﬁ nition, there’s no evidence to answer this)

3) A good question often zeroes in on a puzzle or contradiction:

Example: “Why does this author, who claims to believe in God’s love,

spend all his time writing about God’s vengeance?”

under strain of some kind, or having to adjust? If so, how and why?”

Here you are given the question. Yet even with a directive assignment like

this, you will still need to generate your own questions as you re-read the text

before doing the assignment: Where does this strain show? Is this, in fact,

best typiﬁ ed as a strain? If so, does this strain arise out of things we might

not have initially expected?

F R E E W R I T I N G A N D O U T L I N I N G

A founding question is a great place to begin, but it is only a beginning.

How do you proceed? People have different techniques for generating the

content of an essay: we have heard of index cards, scribbled-on napkins, idea

journals, and even proceeding without notes. There is no sureﬁ re method.

But there are two techniques that most writers ﬁ nd helpful–freewriting and

outlining. Freewriting involves ignoring that critical voice inside you; do

not worry about whether what you are writing makes sense. Just sit at your

computer or in front of a notepad and write every idea that comes into your

head.

Do this for 10 or 15 minutes. On the other hand, “outlining” involves

mapping out-in nested, ﬂ owchart, or even 3-D form-different sections of an

essay and main points you want to make in each.

Each technique has different beneﬁ ts. Freewriting is great for overcom-

ing writer’s block, and outlining often produces a real feeling of comfort

(i.e., “my paper won’t get off track now”). But each technique has pitfalls,

too. Freewriting produces a lot of material that you will not use. And the

ideas you generate while freewriting will, most likely, be very different

from one another and some might not actually be right. This may seem

paradoxical, but the trick to being a good freewriter is being able to delete

most of what you have written. Freewriting is a process that gets you to

the best ideas, but when you have pages and pages of freewriting you will

have to select only the best insights and reorganize them into a coherent

form. The pitfall with outlining is that you might feel bad about not stick-

PART I: STRAT E G I E S F O R G E T T I N G S TARTED

A Guide to Writing | 9

1 For more details about the process of “freewriting,” see Pat Belanoff, Peter Elbow, and Sheryl

I. Fontaine, eds. Nothing Begins with N: Toward a Phenomenology of Freewriting (Carbondale:

Southern Illinois UP, 1991).

ing to the outline. People often ﬁ nd that the writing process causes their

thoughts to develop in ways they had not expected. Recognize that your

outline is a hypothesis rather than a life sentence. Your outline is a work-

ing map of how you will proceed with your writing, which will most likely

change as you begin to write.

Finally a word about divine inspiration and what have been called “little dar-

lings.” We all have a tendency to think whatever we write, especially if writ-

ten at 3 a.m., is inspired or brilliant, and in any case worthy of preservation.

But revising and deleting are critical. They require that you throw away old

sentences and paragraphs (and in many cases, whole sections) and rewrite

them completely. As one of our own professors told us, “The quality of a

paper can be measured by how much has gone in the trash.” Cutting is es-

pecially hard to do when you come up with a particularly nice turn of phrase.

The problem is that these phrases often are off-topic or, given the improved

state of your draft, no longer appropriate. Gertrude Stein once encouraged

writers to be willing to murder such “little darlings,” and we have found her

brutal advice to be right.

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PART I: STRAT E G I E S F O R G E T T I N G S TARTED

A Guide to Writing | 11

Part II. What Every Good Essay Needs

T H E S I S

An academic paper without a thesis would be like a mammal without a

spine.

You might have heard “thesis” deﬁ ned as the main idea or argument

of your paper. In some cases, this basic deﬁ nition makes sense. But in many

writing assignments, especially longer research papers, the stakes for a good

thesis go up. In more ambitious papers such as your junior essay, a good the-

sis must meet three criteria: it should be original, arguable, and interesting.

When we say a thesis must be original, we mean that it must be your own work.

You cannot take your thesis from something you have been reading. Your thesis

is your answer to questions you are asking of the text or other evidence.

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2 We owe this metaphor, as well as the criteria for a good thesis, to Michael Radich, A Student’s

Guide to Writing: East Asian Studies Sophomore Tutorial (Cambridge: President and Fellows of

Harvard University, 2003), 36.

T W O L E V E L S O F T H E S E S

Level One: Thesis-as-Thoughtful-Answer (for short, often comparative essays

in which the professor poses a speciﬁ c question for you to answer):

The Assignment: “Discuss how Otto and Proudfoot’s ideas of

religious experience differ from each other.”

Thesis: “The difference between Otto and Proudfoot on the issue of

religious experience can be explained by a larger difference between

them: Otto is an insider and Proudfoot is an outsider.”

Level Two: Thesis-as-interesting-arguable-and-original (more ambitious-and

often longer-research essays):

Thesis: “In 1968, the Pope published an encyclical on the morality

of the use of artiﬁ cial contraception, which rejects this kind of

contraception based on a particular understanding of ‘natural law.’

However, this understanding both contradicts other Church rulings

on medical technology and ignores certain modern understandings

of sex. This paper will not claim that artiﬁ cial contraception must

be accepted, but that this understanding of ‘natural law’ does not

provide the justiﬁ cation to ban it.”

Thesis: “Despite the compelling case Alvin Plantinga makes for

religious exclusivism, it seems to me that we must accept religious

pluralism as the better position since it allows our beliefs to remain

consistent.”

3 One of the biggest differences between these two levels of theses is the absence of motive in

the ﬁ rst level. To reach the second level of thesis, there has to be a fairly explicit motive, which

can be gleaned from the thesis statements offered above. We discuss motive in the next section.

In addition to being original, your thesis must be arguable. Another way of

saying this is that there must be evidence for your thesis. Some theses are

very interesting but not supportable without contracting the services of a me-

dium or reading three libraries worth of material. Here are two examples of

theses that are not arguable because they would require mountains of data:

Example: “Hindu views of the divine are more nuanced than views

of the divine in other traditions.” (The problem here is that proving

this statement would require an immensely complex comparison,

with data drawn from many different traditions. This would be an

impossible task.)

Example: “The Great Awakening in America was one of the most

profound moments in our religious history.” (Again, the scope here

is too broad. Demonstrating this thesis would mean showing that all

other moments were less profound.)

Linked to the idea that a thesis must be arguable is the idea that it must be

falsiﬁ able. Could there be evidence that would disprove your thesis? It is

important that there could be. If you are asserting things that no conceiv-

able evidence could refute, you are not asserting anything interesting-even

though everyone would agree with it.

Example: “The Rig Veda is a text of hymns addressed to the various

gods of nature.” (This is simply a statement of fact; it cannot be

refuted or falsiﬁ ed.)

Example: “The Bible is the central text for the Christian tradition.”

(Same problem.)

One way to think about thesis statements is this: your reader will not agree

with it until the end, after you have offered all of your evidence and argu-

ments. A thesis statement that seems immediately true is a thesis statement

not worth arguing.

Finally, a thesis must be interesting. How do you make it that way? Your

thesis must concern a topic worthy of consideration, and you must attempt

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to convince the reader of a conclusion that casts fresh light on that topic.

Often, a thesis is interesting because, if shown to be true, it would require

conventional views of the subject to be modiﬁ ed or changed. In other words,

your thesis should say something that is in some way controversial. Exactly

what counts as “interesting” may vary among subﬁ elds, so be sure to refer

to the sections as the end of this guide on writing in speciﬁ c areas. (We will

show you a crucial way of establishing that characteristic below, when we talk

about “motive.”)

All of these things are characteristics of what we might call a “second level”

thesis-one that is interesting, arguable and original. These are the kinds of

theses that you will need to generate for research papers, your junior essay

and your senior thesis. But this kind of ambitious thesis is not required of

every essay you will write in religious studies. There is what we could call a

“ﬁ rst level” of theses as well, a simpler thesis that is merely your answer to a

question posed by your instructor.

We will end this discussion of “thesis” with a few practical notes. Essays

should not read like mystery novels; that is, you should not reveal what the

essay is arguing only at the end, even though this structure might mirror

your own process of drafting. This mystery-novel-structure happens to all of

us in early drafts, and the solution is to take the end of that early draft, where

you ﬁ nally discovered what you want to argue, and make it the starting point

of your revision.

In general, your thesis–which does not, despite what your ﬁ nicky senior Eng-

lish teacher told you, have to be contained in one sentence–should come in

the ﬁ rst few paragraphs. It is sometimes useful to ﬂ ag your thesis statement

clearly with explicit phrases like, “In this paper, I will contend . . .”; “This

paper argues that . . .”; or even “My thesis in this paper is . . .”

M O T I V E

Every academic paper has to answer the “so what?” question that critical

readers always have in the back of their minds. Why is this thesis important?

These questions take us into the realm of “motive.” The motive is the element

of the paper that draws the reader in; motives set out reasons you have written

your paper. Often they establish that your paper is a plausible counter-argu-

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16 |

ment to another signiﬁ cant view on your topic. We talked above about how

good theses sometimes correct a conventional understanding. So motives can

start by making the conventional view–the view you are arguing against or

revising–explicit. By doing this, you have not only shown yourself familiar with

what others have written about the text or with the argument you are tackling,

but have also shown that your own thesis is worth arguing. In your motive you

are saying–“Often, people understand this subject like this [explain that view],

but there is something missing from this, something my own thesis adds.”

Yet your motive should not set your paper up as an argument against a

“straw man.” A “straw man” is a dummy position, usually one that no seri-

ous person would really hold. A writer sets up such a straw man merely to

knock it down so they can appear to have accomplished something impor-

tant. Arguments that rely upon straw men are not interesting in the sense we

have discussed because they tell us something new only if we happen to be

someone who holds outrageous and unfounded beliefs.

Example of a “straw man”: “Although many people have found Christian-

ity to be a polytheistic religion (it is, after all, the holy trinity), I will argue

that Christianity is actually monotheistic.”

Straw man arguments are bad because they do not require much of the

writer. The smarter the view you are going to be modifying or overturning,

the smarter and more interesting your own argument.

Does a motive require you to engage with a claim someone else has actually

argued? No, especially when it is an assignment that does not ask you to read

secondary sources. In these cases, your motive might point to a superﬁ cial

(but still plausible) way you could imagine someone else interpreting what

you are writing about:

Example: “Although we might initially ﬁ nd it puzzling that Durkheim

relies so much on dichotomies to advance his argument, there is a

deliberate method he pursues here.”

Example: “Mitchell detects a strain in Congregationalism caused by

the different views within the congregation about religious sacra-

ments, but if we look closer, we realize that these seemingly opposed

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views on the sacraments share a set of common assumptions.”

The basic principle of the “motive” remains: the motive establishes that your

paper will provide an interpretation different from another plausible (though

ultimately mistaken) view.

We end this section with some practical points. First, the language of motive

often begins or ends with phrases that include “although” or “despite”–as

in the sentence “Despite what some observers have thought, this text is not

about _____.” Second, motives need not be conﬁ ned to an introductory

clause in a single sentence. Especially when your motive involves discuss-

ing another thinker’s actual argument, you need to spend time (in a senior

thesis, even a few pages) on what that view entails.

T H E B O D Y

Using and Interpreting Textual Evidence

A motivated thesis shows that you have a claim worth arguing; to prove that

claim requires evidence. But providing evidence means more than stud-

ding your own claims with lines from what you have been reading. Using

evidence effectively means more than repeating texts-it requires interpreting

texts. To illustrate this, let us ask you a question:

What is this?

“A pig,” you say? Wrong: It is an aerial view of a man wearing a sombrero and

cowboy boots. As with this picture, you should not take the meaning of a pas-

sage to be self-evident-you need to explain what you think the line or passage

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18 |

4 Many of the points made in the body section are taken from Carla Marie, Travis D. Smith, and

Annie Brewer Stilz, The Student’s Guide to Writing in Government 10 (Cambridge: President and

Fellows of Harvard University, 2002).

5 This cartoon and the use of it to illustrate new ways of seeing come from the Vermont writer

Geoffrey Stokes; Pat Kain, who teaches in the Expository Writing Program, has used this in her

handout, “Idea and the Academic Essay,” to which our own explanation is indebted.

means (and, if necessary, your reason for rejecting more obvious readings of

it). As Marie et al. write, “Remember that students offering completely differ-

ent answers to the paper topic will appeal to the same text you do. Your job is

to convince the reader that the evidence supports your thesis rather than theirs.

This requires thoughtful analysis, and the reader cannot do that for you.”

Interpreting a quotation involves two things: ﬁ rst and brieﬂ y, you need to

summarize what the author said, i.e., re-state what you think the author is

saying (and this might take a few sentences if the ideas in the quotation are

complicated). But second and more importantly, you need to analyze what

the author is saying. Unlike when you summarize, when you analyze you are

adding something to the text, not just repeating it. You analyze a passage by

noting something in it that is not on the surface: most dramatically, a con-

tradiction in it or a subtext that the author did not intend or less dramatically

(but more commonly), an interesting ramiﬁ cation it suggests or an implicit

connection you see it has to other points. Quotations that you use should not

be self-explanatory (just as self-evident theses are not really theses). Finally,

you need to link this interpretation back to your own argument: analysis is

merely a digression if it does not connect up with your own claim.

To sum up: Your interpretation of the quotations you use should satisfy

three aims:

(a) you should clarify in your own words what the author means in

the quoted passage;

(b) you should analyze the quotation;

argument.

Let’s turn to an actual example; you will see that it takes quite a bit of space

to do justice to a piece of evidence.

Once again, we will end with some nitty-gritty tips about using quotations.

What follows is not just a matter of propriety; it is often a matter of integrity:

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This sympathy that Kampan expresses toward the character of Surpanakha comes

to full ﬂ owering in the next rather lengthy passage (twenty verses in length), in

which the raksasi fervently pines for Rama all night long. Here is a sample:

When [Rama] had gone, she felt her life falling away, leaving her body.

With her senses stunned, shrunken into herself, she stood there and

could hardly breathe. “He has no affection for me at all,” she thought,

“no room in his heart for me”...she felt that if she did not embrace

his chest this very day she would die...as the sky turned red...she grew

weak and anguished while the moon, high and ﬁ rm in the sky, troubled

her with its long light...her precious life was burning at the touch of the

cool wind to her large, soft, sweet breast and she was seething.

She scooped up handfuls of ice, miraculously cool and placed them

down on her young, radiant breasts but they were no better than

butter that would melt away laid out on a hot ledge, with ﬁ re blazing

around it....Though it seemed as if she were caught in the blazing

ﬁ re that consumes a universe, that mindless woman did not lose

her life[,] saved by the drug of her desire to have that man with his

body the color of the dark ocean and then to live! (Kampan 99-102;

3:5:70,71,75,77,78,85)

With the coming of evening and the rising of the moon, the nighttime neytal

(seashore) landscape of Tamil akam poetry is established, which, for the Tamil

reader, immediately expresses the emotion of a lover’s lamentation at separation

from her beloved.26 In this fashion, for the reader versed in akam aesthetics, the

very landscape screams out the same fervent lament that Surpanakha experiences

in these verses. Kampan also employs abundant similes to emphasize the

intense longing of Surpanakha for Rama, a longing that causes her to become

weak, to physically waste away, and to burn so strongly that not even the coolest

substances on the earth can alleviate it. By all of these aesthetic techniques,

Kampan helps us to experience viscerally the agonizing personal emotions of

the raksasi, thus giving us the opportunity to truly identify with this creature,

upon whom we now take pity. We realize that Surpanakha’s longing is beyond

her control-just as we sometimes cannot control with whom we fall in love-and

we thus grow more sympathetic to her plight. In the reader’s eyes, Surpanakha is

no longer simply a bag full of lust, but rather, she is the victim of those emotions

which even the very disciplined cannot always control.

26 “Seaside imagery is prescribed for the evocation of emotions of impatient lovers who must

undergo enforced separation” (Study of Stolen Love x).

a) Deﬁ ne key words and explain important ideas. Often a quotation con-

tains terms and concepts that won’t be familiar to the reader; before you

do anything else, you need to explain them.

b) If you reformulate another person’s ideas in your own words, drawing them

from a text without quoting it directly, it is still necessary to include a citation.

c) Do not use quotations out of context.

d) Try to avoid splicing too many sentence fragments in quotation marks

into your own text. Use quotations when assembling textual evidence, but

use your own words whenever you can.

e) Individual words do not need to be placed in quotations, except per-

haps the ﬁ rst time that you use and deﬁ ne them-or if that particular word

is distinctive or noteworthy.

f) Use ellipses sparingly. Never use ellipses to cut out a piece of text that

is inconvenient for your thesis. And never use ellipses to unite into a

single quotation passages that should be quoted separately, being signiﬁ -

cantly separated from each other in the original text.

Anticipating and Refuting Counter-Arguments

Your paper should show that you are aware of possible objections to your

argument. As Marie, Smith, and Stilz explain:

Once you have laid out your argument and integrated textual support, go

back to the step in which you assembled what you thought was the most

important textual evidence. Examine the bits of evidence that were difﬁ cult

to reconcile with your argument. Consider counter-arguments and alterna-

tive interpretations and try to refute the most forceful objections to your thesis.

Where is your argument weakest or most vulnerable? What criticisms might

a smart reader raise? What evidence would these people have on their side?

Why is their position less convincing than your own? You will want to ana-

lyze brieﬂ y the passages that seem to indicate an alternative explanation, and

then show why these passages are less representative than the ones you have

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6 This list is taken from Marie, Smith, and Stilz, 16-18.

T O P I C S E N T E N C E T I P S

According to Elizabeth Abrams of Harvard’s Expository Writing Program,

“there’s no set formula for writing a topic sentence.” Instead, she suggests,

“you should work to vary the form your topic sentences take. Repeated

too often, any method grows wearisome.”

Abrams offers a list of topic

sentence types:

Complex sentences: These are sentences that combine a transition

from the previous paragraph with a statement of the main point of

the new paragraph.

Questions: Asking a question can be a very effective way of setting up

the thrust of a paragraph - just as long as you make sure you answer it.

Bridge sentences: Abrams writes, “Like questions, bridge sentences

. . . make an excellent substitute for more formal topic sentences.

Bridge sentences indicate both what came before and what comes

next without the formal trappings of multiple clauses.” Abrams’s

example: “But there is a clue to this puzzle.”

Pivot sentences: These are topic sentences that, unusually, come

in the middle of a paragraph, indicating that the paragraph

will change direction. Such topic sentences are often found in

“signpost paragraphs” that themselves serve overall as a pivot in

the larger structure of the argument as a whole. Abrams points

out that they are often used to introduce the refutation of counter-

evidence (for example, “But there might be a more compelling

interpretation to consider.”).

8 “Topic Sentences and Signposting,” on the Harvard Writing Center’s “Writing Tools” webpage:

www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/TopicSentences.html

chosen, or why those other passages are taken out of context, or why they do

not present an adequate view. If you have been asked to compare and contrast

two authors and you have taken one author’s side, consider how the other

author might respond to the criticism you have put forward.

Using Topic Sentences and Signposts

How do you write so that your sentences and paragraphs can support the

ideas you are trying to convey?

For paragraphs, use topic sentences. A topic sentence functions in a para-

graph much as a thesis statement does for the argument as a whole, but on

a microscopic level: it announces the overall point of the paragraph. As you

write, and particularly as you rewrite and edit, you should make sure that

each paragraph contains an identiﬁ able topic sentence, usually close to its

beginning (although sometimes in other places).

Example: In describing religious experiences, Proudfoot wants to be

true to the person having the experience; he wants to describe it in the

subject’s terms.

Example: But how might Plantinga respond to this point about fairness?

If topic sentences indicate where that particular paragraph is going (and where

it just was), “signposts” indicate where the whole paper is going, summing up

where it has been in the process. They most often come at turning points in

the essay, the moment before you are about to talk about a more subtle similar-

ity between two thinkers or consider a qualiﬁ cation to your argument.

Example of a “signpost”: “To sum up, the major weakness of exclusivism

is that it implies that adherents of the true religion are privileged in some

way; yet this claim cannot be fair.”

Both topic sentences and “signposts” orient your readers, preventing them

from getting lost.

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7 Marie, Smith, and Stilz, 18.

C O N C L U D I N G Y O U R E S S A Y

By this point you have done a lot of work, and you may be running up against

the assigned page limit for the paper. (Actually, it is great to be somewhat over

the page limit when your ﬁ rst draft is ﬁ nished, since a paper that must be edited

down is always improved in the process.) Do not just tack on an extra sentence

or two and go to bed. A good conclusion is one your reader will remember. You

may want to recap the main point, but do not merely summarize the whole

paper. You may want to explain how your paper does something that other argu-

ments have not. You may want to say that you have unpacked some particularly

elusive bit of evidence. You may want to place your own thesis in a larger context.

But two things to avoid: do not make the mistake of trivializing your work in the

conclusion. Even if you mention important remaining questions, do so in a way

that points to contribution you have made. And do not end by taking the paper

in a whole new direction (“But that’s a question for another paper!”). The conclu-

sion should consider what your paper argued from a new angle, not open up a

whole other debate. Here’s an example of a good conclusion:

It is our hope that we have effectively demonstrated how a consideration of

aesthetics is vital in determining the moral intentions of our three authors, and

the moral signiﬁ cance of the stories they tell. There is of course a seemingly endless

amount of work to be done—we have only analyzed two passages thus far! —but

this study suggests the possibility of a general interpretive method that may be ap-

plied to these texts. Valmiki locates the reader at the aesthetic distance demanded

by rasa-theory; Kampan brings his readers into the landscape and close to the

experiences of the characters, while occasionally allowing for a distanced, cosmic

perspective whenever such a perspective is required; Tulsi consistently adopts the

most distanced perspective of the three, allowing for a combination of impersonal,

didactic moral instruction and a glorious vision of the vastness and bliss of Rama,

the Lord of the universe. Taking a hint from Abhinavagupta, may modern schol-

ars and commentators take such aesthetic considerations into account as they

attempt to interpret the moral signiﬁ cance of these three Ramayanas. At the same

time, may they realize that, before the modern period, Indian tradition never

viewed ethics as a category to be considered by itself, for to pre-modern Indian

minds, ethics is inextricably intertwined with every aspect of human existence.

Thus, by (re-)introducing aesthetics into the ethical debate, we hope that the world

may begin to see again how all of our modern “categories of knowledge” are really

profoundly interrelated—a point which Indian tradition has always afﬁ rmed.

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24 |

A C H E C K L I S T F O R S U C C E S S F U L W R I T I N G

q reread the text before writing

q examine the assignment question

for clues about what kind of thesis it

requires

q come up with an interesting

question your essay is attempting to

answer

q clearly state your thesis in the

introduction. If it is a long essay also

mention the main points you will use

to defend the thesis

q carefully choose evidentiary

quotes and interpret them for the

reader in the body of the paper

q make sure that every point you

make follows logically from the

preceding one, leads logically to the

following one, and ultimately supports

your thesis

q tie your conclusion to the thesis

and other points raised in the paper

q consider possible objections to

your argument

And for essays that you really

want to be good:

q write an early draft and revise it at

least once

Do Not

q attempt to write without a careful

review of the text

q select an argument that restates

what is straightforwardly obvious in

the text

q quote the professor’s comments

from lecture

q ignore all or part of the

assignment question

q write an introduction that does

not include a thesis statement

q use textual quotations without

interpreting them for the reader

q write a conclusion that merely

restates the body of the paper

q forget to consider objections to

your argument

q use generalizations

9 This checklist borrows from Marie, Smith, and Stilzer, 21.

Part III. Different Approaches to

Writing in Religious Studies

U S I N G H I S T O R I C A L M E T H O D S I N

T H E S T U D Y O F R E L I G I O N

Whenever writing history you will want to follow the general advice already

given in this handbook. In other words, you will need to ﬁ nd a topic (e.g.,

Christianity during the Civil War), generate a set of questions about that

topic (e.g., What role did speciﬁ c church X play in the conﬂ ict in Y region?)

and marshal the evidence needed to answer these questions-documents, let-

ters, ks, newspapers, artifacts-essentially anything that can tell us about life

in the past.

What distinguishes a history paper from another kind of writing? What are

historians interested in? Historians study the past, but they study it with par-

ticular questions in mind. Historians are interested in explaining how events

in the past changed over time, why they happened in the ﬁ rst place, what

other trends they were connected to or what their signiﬁ cance was.

A Guide to Writing | 27

How should you proceed once you have ﬁ xed on a particular question?

Many historical essays are inspired by the secondary literature: how have

particular historians interpreted the topic at hand? In other words, you

might proceed “backwards”–to go from secondary literature to primary. If

your topic is evangelical revival in the 19th century (for example) you will

want to know what other historians have said about this. You will want to

know the debates that characterize different historical views on this sub-

ject. Once you have a sense for how others are thinking about this topic,

you might want to start looking yourself at the primary sources (evidence)

they are arguing about. What do you think about this evidence? Have

you found other evidence from this period that might help you revise or

critique what they are saying? Do you have another interpretive angle from

which to understand this evidence?

Here is a point-by-point process for thinking about the research and

writing process:

1. Read and understand scholarly interpretations of your topic.

2. Study and take notes on the debates that scholars are having about

this past event.

3. Study and take notes on the primary sources you have read on this

event.

4. Think about the questions, problems or contradictions that

remain for you. What kinds of questions have scholars not asked

about these primary sources? When and why have scholarly

interpretations clash? Do you have a slightly different reading of

these primary sources-a reading that might resolve contradictions

or puzzles in the secondary sources? Do you have a reading of the

primary sources that might add something to how we understand

these events? Do you have primary evidence that has not been used

before-or not been used speciﬁ cally to speak to these problems?

Perhaps your reading of the primary evidence could change or shed

light on our interpretations of the past?

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28 |

Yet sometimes you will want to begin not with secondary sources but with

primary ones. If you know about primary sources that are under-used (some-

times a faculty member can suggest primary sources to you) you can begin

with these. Study them and take notes. Then read secondary interpretations

on these sources or other sources related to your topic.

Whether you go from secondary to primary sources or vice versa, you will want

to establish what we have earlier called a “motive”: you will want to show your

reader what is interesting, new or signiﬁ cant about your argument. One good

way to do this in history papers is to argue that you are contributing something

speciﬁ c to the scholarly conversation about your topic-that you have a new or

slightly different answer to problems, puzzles or questions that historians have

struggled with when encountering this past event.

W R I T I N G I N T H E P H I L O S O P H Y O F R E L I G I O N

Types of Arguments

Like most types of academic writing, a paper in the philosophy of religion

should make an argument. The kind of argument it makes, however, differs

from that in other academic ﬁ elds. Most often, it involves writing about a

view or position taken by the author of a text (or the views of more than one

author) and/or arguing in support of one’s own philosophical views. Thus,

generally you are not just writing an argument but writing about arguments.

Depending upon the topic, the central argument of a paper might be one of

several possible kinds. For instance, it might

• argue for a particular interpretation of a text (especially if there is a

plausible, competing interpretation that you can imagine)

• defend the position developed in a text (or series of texts),

• argue that an author’s position has certain weaknesses or problems,

• compare two authors’ views to make an argument about the

relationship between the two views, or

• develop and defend an original position on a philosophical

question.

PART III: DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WRITING

A Guide to Writing | 29

Regardless of which type of argument you engage in, your claim will require

you to provide a clear account of the position in question; and this account

will often take up at least a few paragraphs.

Whether you are focusing on a text or on a philosophical problem, remem-

ber that your paper does not always have to provide a deﬁ nite solution. An

excellent paper may argue that a problem remains unresolved or that an

author’s position contains a fundamental ambiguity. It is also appropriate to

raise questions or issues that you do not resolve in the paper. But be sure to

indicate to your reader that you are doing so deliberately.

Supporting an Argument

As with any essay, you will need to provide evidence to support your argu-

ment. But certain kinds of philosophical essays require certain emphases. If

you are arguing for a particular interpretation of an author’s argument, most

of your emphasis will fall on explaining exactly what you think that author’s

view is and showing how any quotations from that author supports your

reading of his or her view.

Feuerbach argues that this anguish leads the individual to yearn for the

“perfect types of his nature,” a being who possesses the essential human

predicates in a perfect and inﬁ nite manner (281). Feuerbach writes:

But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the individual frees

himself from it by the contemplation of the perfect Being; in this

contemplation he possesses what is otherwise wanting in him.

With the Christians God is nothing else than the immediate unity of

species and individuality, of the universal and individual being. (183)

In this instance, Feuerbach appears to argue that the contemplation of the

“perfect type of his nature” acts as a consolation for the individual’s own

limited and imperfect state, that he or she takes pleasure in seeing his or her

own limits overcome not just in the abstract concept of the species, but in an

actual being.

Religious Studies

30 |

Note that in analyzing the quotation the author makes clear that the view in

question is Feuerbach’s, not the writer’s own. Always be sure that it is clear to

your reader when you are stating the views of an author you are interpreting

and when you are stating your own position; this is especially important when

your own essay is so closely involved in elucidating the text in question.

Other types of arguments require different kinds of support. If you are argu-

ing that a particular view is weak or problematic, for instance, you need to

provide your reader with reasons why. These reasons might involve pointing

out internal contradictions, hidden and unjustiﬁ able presuppositions, or

objectionable consequences of the position. In both reading and writing, you

should constantly ask yourself what an author’s argument takes for granted,

how each point she makes relates to others she has made, and what the

position’s consequences or implications are. It may be useful to provide an

example that demonstrates the weakness of the position.

A ﬁ nal note: Perhaps even more than other kinds of essays, a philosophical

essay must respond to possible objections. Just as you examine philosophical

essays for possible weaknesses, so readers will examine yours, and if you can

anticipate and defuse the major objections, you will go a long way in convinc-

ing them of the truth of what you are arguing.

For further advice on writing in philosophy, refer to:

www.princeton.edu/~jimpryor/general/writing.html

W R I T I N G A P A P E R B A S E D O N F I E L D W O R K

Anthropologists study the lives that people make for themselves and for

each other in the particular circumstances in which they ﬁ nd themselves.

One major and distinguishing way that anthropologists go about this study

is through ﬁ eldwork: ﬁ eldwork is embodied learning–you go out to live

alongside a particular group of people because you believe that some ques-

tion about human experience is best explored by attending to these lives in

this place at this time. Writing a religious studies paper based on ﬁ eldwork

entails then abundantly detailed accounts of three things: 1) how this group

of people live (with a special emphasis on the kinds of bonds they form with

each other); 2) the very speciﬁ c circumstances of their lives; and 3) the reli-

gious idioms they have made, found, inherited, or improvised as they live in

PART III: DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WRITING

A Guide to Writing | 31

these particular circumstances. Writing based on ﬁ eldwork is above all else

the art of disciplined description.

Writing the paper is only one of the kinds of writing you do for a ﬁ eldwork

project. You take notes in the ﬁ eld on what you are seeing and experiencing;

you record what the people you are living with say to you in response to your

questions about their lives and to your presence among them; you take notes

on what you are feeling in the ﬁ eld, your fears, angers, hopes, and desires. The

paper you write eventually should be based on this prior writing in the ﬁ eld.

Fieldwork means entering other people’s lives; writing what you learned

in this process poses moral challenges. How will you represent the lives

of the people you have lived among, their understandings of the world–in

their voices, in yours, in some combination? How will you protect their

anonymity? How will you handle events or circumstances that may be less

than ﬂ attering of them, perhaps even downright ugly, especially if these are

people that others are inclined to be hostile to or suspicious of? You will

have handled some of these questions when you ﬁ lled out the necessary

forms for research with human subjects, but other questions will come

up in the circumstances of the ﬁ eld. There is no single answer to these

questions about poetics and ethics. Different anthropologists have tried

different experiments in writing up their experiences in ways that they feel

honors their own life in the ﬁ eld and respects the integrity and autonomy

of the people with whom they lived. The key thing is to be thoughtful and

intentional about such matters. Above all, ﬁ eldwork as practice and writ-

ing is transparent, meaning that you never use quotation marks unless you

had written a statement down when you heard it; you do not use compos-

ites; you give the context and circumstances of your conversations; you do

not ask leading questions. This ethnographic honesty means a sharp and

clear introspection too: to be attentive to your desires for the people among

whom you go to be a certain way, your fears of them, what it is that brought

you to this project in the ﬁ rst place, the ways that your own life informs the

questions you are asking and the relationships you are making in the ﬁ eld.

So the necessary components of a paper based on ﬁ eldwork are: an ac-

count of the questions you brought to the ﬁ eld informed by reading on

the subject; some discussion of why this venue and these people for your

Religious Studies

32 |

explorations; the most detailed description of those aspects of people’s lives

and relationships relevant to your study; the inclusion of their voices and

perspectives, especially when they disagree with or simply confound what

you want to see; reﬂ ection on yourself as ﬁ eldworker; and your conclu-

sions–what do you know now that you did not when you went out into the

ﬁ eld and what do other students of religion learn for our own work from

your experience and reﬂ ection?

W R I T I N G A C O M P A R A T I V E R E L I G I O N P A P E R

Writing a paper on a comparative topic in the study of religion poses a

distinct challenge. The problem is that comparison itself seems to provide a

natural framework for analysis: one presents A, then presents B, then draws

out similarities and differences between A and B. The problem is that this

“natural” structure produces essays that list rather than argue, essays whose

theses boil down to something like, “These authors are similar in certain

ways, but they’re different in other ways.”

An effective comparative paper requires two things. First, it requires a

sharply focused topic, which will allow you to get at some of the most crucial

points of agreement and difference. While it may be enticing to compare

Hindu and Christian notions of salvation and the afterlife in a ﬁ ve-page

essay, for example, Hindu or Christian notions of salvation in and of them-

selves are topics for multi-volume scholarly studies. Far more productive

would be a comparison of speciﬁ c Hindu and Christian thinkers on the topic

of salvation and the afterlife, say Buddha and Augustine.

Yet a narrow topic is not enough. A good comparative paper requires a

rationale for the comparison itself: what does one learn about either A or

B through comparing the two that one might not otherwise notice? If one

sets out to compare, as above, the thoughts of Augustine and the Buddha on

human suffering, the question that immediately arises in the mind of the

reader is: why? In comparing such two historically and theologically dispa-

rate ﬁ gures, what is to be gained by comparison? Does one notice something

about the teachings of the Buddha if one considers them through the eyes of

Augustine, or vice versa? How does engaging in comparison illumine other-

wise overlooked elements of either thing being compared?

PART III: DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WRITING

A Guide to Writing | 33

An effective comparative thesis on the topic above might be the following:

Example: In reading Augustine’s Confessions through the lens of the

Buddha’s emphasis on compassion, Augustine’s own doctrine of

compassionate care for others emerges as foundational for the

Christian moral life.

This thesis will move the author beyond simply listing all the similarities and

differences between the texts in question because it has a tight focus, but it

also provides a justiﬁ cation for the comparison itself. Without this compari-

son, without looking at Buddha’s text, we might have missed this important

point about Augustine’s.

One more example of a successful comparative thesis will highlight a coun-

ter-intuitive aspect of comparative essays:

Example: Examining Martin Luther King, Jr.’s application of the Gandhian

principle of non-violence reveals both the Christian and distinctly Hindu

elements of Gandhi’s thought.

As with the ﬁ rst example, this example does not give equal weight to the two

texts: King’s text is being used to illuminate an otherwise obscure aspect of

Gandhi’s. Thus, a useful metaphor for comparative essays is an optical one:

in a successful comparative essay, one text provides a lens that brings into

focus an interesting aspect of a different one. Comparative essays are not

“list essays” but “lens essays.”

Religious Studies

34 |

Resources for Writers

H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y W R I T I N G C E N T E R

Free, pre-scheduled conferences with trained peer tutors are offered Monday

through Friday during the day. Drop-in hours are offered from 7 to 9 p.m., Mon-

day through Thursday at the Barker Center, and on Sunday evenings during the

academic year from, 7 to 9 p.m. in Room 209 at Hilles Library. (During the week,

you need to arrive no later than 8 PM to guarantee a slot.) You are also welcome

to drop in during the day, and, if one of the tutors is free, he or she will gladly meet

with you at that time: www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/

617 495-1655 | Barker Center 019

W R I T I N G C E N T E R ’ S “ W R I T I N G T O O L S ”

These are brief articles explaining various elements of the academic essay, from

how to write an introduction to how to construct a counter-argument:

www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/html/tools.htm

B U R E A U O F S T U D Y C O U N S E L

The Bureau offers students help with some common academic problems. There are

workshops available about reading, writing, procrastinating, time management,

and other academic issues. The Bureau also offers individual counseling, both

academic and personal, as well as peer tutoring, and other services:

www.fas.harvard.edu/~bsc/index.html

617 495-2581

W R I T I N G W I T H S O U R C E S

This booklet is Harvard’s ofﬁ cial publication on conventions for using and citing

sources, including the University’s policies on plagiarism:

www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos/sources

L A M O N T L I B R A R Y W E B S I T E F O R S T U D E N T W R I T E R S

This is a good collection of handouts and research guides created by Lamont’s

librarians to help you begin your research:

hcl.harvard.edu/lamont/resources/guides/

H O U S E T U T O R S I N A C A D E M I C W R I T I N G

Your house may have a resident or non-resident writing tutor who holds regular

ofﬁ ce hours.

PART III: DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WRITING

A Guide to Writing | 35

NOTES