Unlike theology, the academic study of religion seeks to provide accounts of the world's religions from perspectives that have no confessional (religious) ground or agenda. As an empirical pursuit, it is concerned with understanding and explaining what people actually think and do without establishing or enforcing norms for that thought and behavior. It takes the entire universe of religions as its object of study; classically educated scholars were once fond of quoting the Roman playwright Terence (c. 186–159 BCE), a freed slave from North Africa: "homo sum; nihil humanum mihi alienum puto" ("I am a human being; I consider nothing human foreign to me"). It also aspires to treat all religions equally. Of course, these characterizations are subject to critical interrogation, both in terms of the degree to which individual works live up to them and the degree to which they are themselves philosophically defensible.

Despite the...