Wilfred Cantwell Smith: Love, science, and the study of religion

Abstract

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the influential scholar of Islam and reformer of the modern comparative study of religion, provoked controversy in arguing that one cannot understand a religion without studying persons, or persons without studying their faith. Scholarship has largely neglected his further claim that faith cannot be adequately known except in the context of friendship, understood as a mode of love. Here, I explain Smith's notion of love as constitutive of rationality and discuss how it emerges out of his critique of the norms of objectivity and impersonality long thought to be characteristic of the natural sciences. I conclude by suggesting the relevance of Smith's notion of love to the contemporary study of religion. © 2013 The Author.