10.17192/mjr.2025.26.8853 Milani, Milad Milad Milani Thinking Religion and Religious Studies Marburg Journal of Religion : Vol 26 No 1 (2025) Philipps-Universität Marburg 2025 methodology essence of religion Religious studies Martin Heidegger Friedrich Max Müller phenomenology of religion philosophy of religion history of religions reductionism comparative religion religious thought multi-disciplinarity Institute for Comparative Cultural Research - Study of Religions and Anthropology 2025-05-27 2025-05-27 en JournalArticle https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0004/2025/334/8853 urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0004-2025-334-88537 https://doi.org/10.17192/ https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0004/2025/334/8853/8853.png 1612-2941 application/pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 This article argues religious studies is a discipline specifically designed for answering the big questions about religion. The comparative and general study of religion is what emerges when scholarship abandons the big questions about religion. This occurs first by the field’s distancing from theology and later philosophy. Historical and phenomenological approaches present religious studies as a pluralistic and multidisciplinary research field, whilst arguably it is originally polymethodic. The difference, I argue, is that the religious studies discipline is better defined by a multiple methods approach rather than a disciplinary hybridity. I make my argument by discussing the philosophical method of “thinking” as necessary to reclaim for religious studies and specifically making the case for thinking as a key method for religious studies research. 1612-2941 Marburg Journal of Religion Vol 26 No 1 (2025)