So, to answer the question posed at the outset of this site--"What is the study of religion?"--we can now say that it is the disciplined inquiry of but one aspect of human cultural practices--an aspect identified, for the purposes of our study, by the definition we choose to use, a definition that suits our purposes and our curiosities. What unites us into this collective group--signified by the possessive pronoun "our"--is not only shared curiosities, common tools, and agreed upon standards of evidence and argumentation, but also the institutional setting that draws us together as a group, and to which our labors contribute. This setting is the public university, an institution that has profound bearing on what ends up counting as the academic studying of religion.

Perhaps, then, we should conclude by revising our original question, for "What is the study of religion?" might best be answered by first asking: "Where is the study of religion practiced, by whom, and for what purposes?" For, depending on context and interests, it can be very different things, to different people--much like Mary Douglas's "matter" that can end up being either soil or dirt.

And so we return to the example cited at the start: the newspaper editor and the story about a monument to the Ten Commandments erected by the Chief Justice of the state of Alabama's Supreme Court. How shall we classify it? How shall we study it?

Answering such questions is the work of the scholar of religion.