Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga
conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars
who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also
motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what
the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of
Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic
study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also
by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically
separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee
of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in
themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a
magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds
about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline).
To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s
study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political
science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by
ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics),
and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people,
but also by the scholars themselves.
The full essay is at "Educating Scholarly Priests."
