Historians, Ethnographers & Scholars of Religion

Historians, ethnographers and scholars of religion study religious life from outside it: the chroniclers of conquest-era Mexico and Peru, the founders of comparative religion and the history of religions, and the ethnographers who documented shamanism, folk belief and indigenous ritual among peoples from Siberia to the Andes. A figure belongs here for the scholarship rather than for practicing what they studied, which is what separates this heading from the teachers and clergy of the traditions themselves.