Socio-Political Aspects of the Cognitive Science of Religion

This paper is stating the problem of partisanship of religious studies, partisanship of Cognitive Science of Religion in particular. The study presents a special architecture for analyzing the "politicization" of various fields of knowledge. Through the inclusion of three variables — aspects leading to increased popularity among social structures, aspects leading to increased influence in scholarly discourse, and aspects or "markers" of particular political coordinates of leading theories and authors — we present a "lens" for analyzing partisanship or specific political biases. In cases where "politicization" has direct consequences on the proposed results, and in cases where the author himself demonstrates his ideological positions, there is the need for proper articulation and analysis of this partisanship. The paper, therefore, is not about the popularity of the Cognitive Science of Religion itself, but rather about the growing problem of the "politicization" of scientific knowledge, especially in today's multi-polar context, where science can become an instrument of political influence in particularly insidious ways.