Forget worldviews: Towards a Deleuzian religious studies

Abstract

In this essay I engage in a close analysis of three documents central to the push to place the worldview concept at the front and centre of Religious Studies in schools and universities - the 2018 Commission on Religious Education Report Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward, Worldview: A Multidisciplinary Report(2020) and The Worldview Project: Discussion Papers (2020). I argue that the documents paint a picture of a subject caught between an objectivist account of a fixed field of really existing religions and a postmodern or Deleuzian mélange of lived interactions and flows. I advocate for a Deleuzian transformation of Religious Studies and the embrace of decolonisation and critical religious literacy, based in a vision of the study of religions as the study of relations and assemblages.