IAHR Guidelines for Public Outreach

In its public outreach, the IAHR – through its elected officials, member and affiliated associations, activities, events, projects, and publications – acts according to the following principles. These principles are expected to guide individual and collective IAHR members when acting in their capacity as IAHR members, that is,

        1. when hosting or participating in IAHR activities, events, projects or publications;
        2. when accomplishing a single specific task that the IAHR has explicitly delegated to one or more of its members;
        3. when using the IAHR name or logo or when appealing to the IAHR and its institutional role in any other way or form (e.g. by referring to the IAHR website).
    1. The IAHR recognizes and defends the importance of the scholarly non-religious study of religion\s in the academy as well as in the public sphere as a means to inform and educate the public on religion\s-related matters, thus allowing citizens, policy-makers, and other individual and collective actors to make informed decisions pertaining to religion\s-related issues.
    2. The IAHR is engaged in and supports activities, events, projects, and publications that are rooted in a non-religious (to be distinguished from both “religious” and “anti-religious”), academic, and analytical1 perspective. Such perspectives include, but are not limited to, historical, philological, social-scientific, psychological (e.g. cognitive, evolutionary), and philosophical (e.g. epistemological, methodological, theoretical) approaches. Point 3 clarifies a number of basic epistemic and methodological presuppositions.
    3. The IAHR is engaged in and supports activities, events, projects, and editorial work that are based on the following epistemic and methodological principles:
      1. Methodological naturalism, that is, the exclusion, on methodological and epistemic grounds, of arguments, theories, and data (e.g. first-person experiential data) resting on the presupposed existence or authority of super-natural entities or principles (e.g. gods, dharma, spirits).
      2. Axiological neutrality, that is, the exclusion, on methodological and epistemic grounds, of evaluative judgments regarding the intrinsic value, virtues or inadequacies of religious or anti-religious (pro-)positions. Evaluative judgments are admissible, on methodological and epistemic grounds, in relation to the social and environmental consequences (e.g. systemic discrimination, ecological deterioration) of religious, non-religious (that is, including the IAHR’s position), and anti-religious positions, when these evaluations are supported by data-driven research.
      3. Suspension of truth claims, that is, the exclusion, on methodological and epistemic grounds, of evaluative judgments regarding the ultimate truth or referentiality of claims or statements pertaining to religious doctrines, experiences, beliefs, etc.
    4. The IAHR recognizes and defends the importance of a continuing reflection on the form and scope of the academic study of religion\s. The IAHR is engaged in, and supports activities, events, projects, and editorial work that offer a ground for critical self-reflection on the IAHR and its stance.
    5. The IAHR is not engaged in nor supports any activity, event, project or publication aimed at defending or fostering the partisan interests of any particular religious or anti-religious individual or group, nor any activity, event, project or publication aimed at defending or fostering general (inter-)religious or anti-religious views or interests.
    6. The IAHR is not engaged in nor lends its institutional support to “sociotechnical” activities, events, projects or publications (e.g. social engineering, interreligious dialogue, anti-cult advocacy, secularist political activism, or faith-based peace-building initiatives).

    1 As opposed, here, to expressive, aesthetic, artistic, or experiential approaches.

Prepared by the IAHR Executive Committee (2020–2025) in August 2024 as an explanatory document for Article 1 of the Constitution