Religion (2001) 31, 63–66doi:10.1006/reli.2001.0290, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Portrait

With this issue is inaugurated a regular section on recent figures of importance in the study ofreligion. Readers are invited to submit their suggestions on Portraits to the Editors.

Eric J. Sharpe (1933–2000)

A S

Eric J. Sharpe was born on 19 September 1933 in Lancaster, England. He attended theLancaster Royal Grammar School (1945–51) and subsequently studied at the Universityof Manchester (1954–58), where he obtained his BA and MA degrees. He then earnedhis doctoral degree from the University of Uppsala (1958–65).

In 1966 Sharpe returned to the University of Manchester as Lecturer in ComparativeReligion. He subsequently served as Senior Lecturer (1970–75) and Reader (1975–76)at the University of Lancaster. While firmly established in the British academia, Sharpedid get to savour academic life across the Atlantic, as a Visiting Instructor in Religionat Manchester College, Indiana (1965–66), as Visiting Professor of Religion atNorthwestern University (1973) and as Visiting Professor of Religion at the Universityof Manitoba (1976).

The geographical locus of Eric Sharpe’s activities underwent a major shift when hemoved to the University of Sydney in 1977 as Foundation Professor of ReligiousStudies. The challenge of founding a department appealed to him. It was in Australiathat I first came in personal touch with him, having arrived at the University ofQueensland at Brisbane in 1976. In 1980 I joined the Sydney Department of ReligiousStudies as a Lecturer myself. Around this time Sharpe had ‘globalised’ his academicpresence, as it were. He served as Professor of Religion at Uppsala (1978–81), as VisitingProfessor of Religious Studies at McMaster University (1985–86) and in March of 1986as Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the University of Manitoba. Thereafter he spentmost of his time at Sydney, apart from a stint as a Senior Mission Scholar in Residence,Overseas Ministries Study Center, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sharpe was also actively associated with academic organisations, two of which deservemention. One is the International Association of the History of Religions (IAHR), ofwhich he served as Deputy Secretary (1970–71) and as Acting General Secretary(1971–75). He was the prime mover of two of its quinquennial congresses, at Lancasterin 1975 and at Sydney in 1985. The other organisation, more local than international innature, in the running of which he played a significant role is the Australian Associationfor the Study of Religions, of which he was President (1983–85).

Sharpe retired in 1996 and settled in Sydney with his wife Brigitta. He passed awayin his sleep on 20 October 2000.

One is entitled to expectations of simultaneously multi-faceted contributions to thestudy of religion from a life of such diverse promptings, and one is not disappointed.

One area in which Eric Sharpe advanced our knowledge is that of Hindu studies. Heco-authored a book with John Hinnells on Hinduism in 1972 which bears that title.That book followed upon a 1971 work entitled Thinking About Hinduism. In this area hewas particularly fascinated by the use of English as a medium of religious communi-cation among Hindus themselves and by the implications of this linguistic mediation forthe understanding by Hindus of their own tradition. I discovered this interest of his for

� 2001 Academic Press0048–721X/01/010063+04 $35.00/0

myself when I shared with him the draft of a research proposal to examine the biblical

64 Eric J. Sharpe (1933–2000)

usages which had found their way into S. Radhakrishnan’s slender but popular book TheHindu View of Life. Among the texts of Hinduism, it was the Bhagavadgıta whichparticularly interested Sharpe, as it has interested numerous scholars ever since it was firsttranslated into English in 1785. He fully supported a conference on it as part of theIAHR Congress when it met in Sydney in 1985. The occasion led us to conceive of atrilogy: The Hindu Gita, which dealt with Hindu interpretations, written by me; TheUniversal Gita, which dealt with its Western interpretations, written by him; and a third,combined volume with a new translation and a fresh interpretation. I am happy to saythat the first two volumes did see the light of day but that, alas, it is now too late for thethird.

Hinduism also provided the spur for Sharpe’s missiological studies. He wrote majorworks on two eminent Christian missionaries who worked in India: J. N. Farquhar andA. C. Hogg. A third book deals with the life of another missionary who was originallya Sikh, Sadhu Sundar Singh by name, and who never returned from a missionaryexcursion into Tibet. Sharpe lived through the change in the focus of Christian–Hindurelations from conversion to dialogue, and, he testifies to the change in a book publishedin 1977 under the title Faith Meets Faith.

It should not be surprising that one whose interests embraced Hinduism andChristianity should have taken to comparative religion. The appearance of Eric Sharpe’s1975 book, Comparative Religion: A History, was welcomed by scholars, and the passageof years has only enhanced its reputation. It continues to be one of the most widely readbooks in the field. It offers remarkable clarity on a complex subject. That a whole panelof the History of the Study of Religion Group at the 1988 meeting of the AmericanAcademy of Religion (AAR) was devoted to it offers further testimony to its stature, asdoes Sharpe’s subsequent response to it (he was not present at the session) (see ‘Sharpeon the Sharpe Symposium’). A number of books co-edited by him deal withcomparative themes such as the concepts of man and of salvation. His co-edited bookMan and His Salvation (1973) memorialised his mentor, S. G. F. Brandon. Brandon washimself the editor of A Dictionary of Comparative Religion, to which Sharpe contributedseveral articles dealing with methods in the study of religion.

Methodology in the study of religion provided another facet of Sharpe’s engagementwith the study of religion. In conversation, he would characterise the study of religionas passing through three stages, each beginning with the letter M: materials, method andmotive. He placed the first phase, that of data-gathering, under ‘material’; the next phase(and, according to him, sometimes even preoccupation) under ‘method’, and, with therising influence of Derrida, Foucault and Said, the third phase under ‘motive’.

Sharpe was particularly intrigued by the relationship between theology and phenom-enology of religion. He therefore greatly regretted his inability to participate in a panelorganised around his views at the 1996 annual meeting of the AAR, sponsored jointlyby the Theology and Religious Reflection Section and History of the Study of ReligionGroup. (He had to stay away on medical advice.) The proceedings of the session werepublished in the CSSR Bulletin (1997). There were essays by Arvind Sharma, JonathanZ. Smith, Robert Segal, Delwin Brown and Ninian Smart, as well as one by Sharpehimself. Sharpe’s earlier book on Nathan Söderblom and the Study of Religion had pavedthe way for his deepening interest in the issue.

Sharpe’s thinking on methodological issues is remarkably keen. He had a profoundappreciation for the intellectual emotion underlying any method in the study of religion.That sensitivity was probably the consequence of his interest in the history of ideas. This

sensitivity may also account for his concept of response-threshold—an insight which

Portrait 65

now seems prophetic, given the current questioning of Western paradigms in the studyof religion:

A ‘response threshold’ is crossed when it becomes possible for the believer to advancehis or her own interpretation against that of the scholar. In classical comparativereligion this was hardly a problem, since most of the scholar’s time was spentinvestigating the religions of the past and often of the very remote past. Interpretationsmight be challenged, but only by other specialists working according to Westerncanons and conventions. Today, by contrast, a greater proportion of study is devotedto contemporary, or at least recent, forms of living traditions. The study of religionoften shades into a dialogue of religions, in which the view of both partners are (at leastin theory) equally important. The response threshold implies the right of thepresent-day devotee to advance a distinctive interpretation of his or her owntradition—often at variance with that of Western scholarship—and to be taken entirelyseriously in so doing. (‘The Study of Religion: Methodological Issues’, p. 85)

Select Bibliography of Eric J. Sharpe*

BooksNot to Destroy but to Fulfil: The Contribution of J. N. Farquhar to Protestant Missionary Thought in India

Before 1914, Lund, Gleerup 1965.Thinking about Hinduism, London, Lutterworth 1971.The Theology of A. C. Hogg, London, Lutterworth 1971.Hinduism (with John R. Hinnells), Newcastle upon Tyne, Oriel Press 1972.Faith Meets Faith: Some Christian Attitudes to Hinduism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,

London, SCM 1977.Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd ed., London, Duckworth 1985 [1975].Nathan Söderblom and the Study of Religion, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press 1990.

Articles‘Anthropology’, in S. G. F. Brandon (ed.), A Dictionary of Comparative Religion, London, Weidenfeld

and Nicolson 1970, pp. 83–6.‘Psychology of Religion’, in S. G. F. Brandon (ed.), A Dictionary of Comparative Religion, London,

Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1970, pp. 513–7.‘The Study of Religion: Methodological Issues’, in Mircea Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion,

New York, Macmillan 1987, vol. 14, pp. 83–8.‘Sharpe on the Sharpe Symposium’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (1989), pp. 213–20.‘The Compatibility of Theological and Religious Studies’, CSSR Bulletin 26 (1997), pp. 52–60.

*For a fuller bibliography through 1992, see Sharma (ed.), The Sum of Our Choices, pp. 411–17.

Articles about Eric J. SharpeAronowicz, Annette, ‘Discussion of Eric J. Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History’, Method and

Theory in the Study of Religion 1 (1989), pp. 41–6.Gualtieri, Antonio R., ‘Transcendence and Reductionism in Religious Studies: Eric Sharpe on

Wilfred Cantwell Smith’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 1 (1989), pp. 47–53.Hackett, Rosalind I. J., ‘An Africanist’s Critique of Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (2nd

edition)’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 1 (1989), pp. 54–7.King, Ursula, ‘Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion (1989)—An Assessment’, Method and Theory in the

Study of Religion 1 (1989), pp. 58–64.Segal, Robert, ‘What Does Comparative Religion Compare?’, Method and Theory in the Study of

Religion 1 (1989), pp. 65–70.

Wiebe, Donald, ‘ ‘‘Taking Religion Seriously’’: Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History as

66 Eric J. Sharpe (1933–2000)

Apology’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 1 (1989), pp. 71–9.Sharma, Arvind, ed., The Sum of our Choices: Essays in Honour of Eric J. Sharpe, Atlanta, Scholars Press

1996.

ARVIND SHARMA is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill Universityand is currently Visiting Professor of Indic Studies at Harvard University. He is theauthor of, most recently, To The Things Themselves: Essays on the Discourse and Practice ofPhenomenology of Religion (Walter de Gruyter, 2001 [forthcoming]).

Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, 3520 University Street, Montreal, QCH3A 2A7, Canada. E-mail: cxlj@musica.mcgill.ca