We beseech Thee, O Lord, to fill this little bottle...

Just back from Bielefeld, that buzzin' buzzin' town, where I had to stay longer than I liked (well; even one day would have been longer than I liked). More of the usual boring business stuff, interspersed with short rounds of sleep at the boring business hotel (and a decidedly third-rate one, at that).

But what wasn't boring was my fellow guests at the hotel. As it happens, this hotel was HQ for a big conference and bean-fest of the - I swear I am not making this up - International Institute for the Empirical Study of Theology. (And the empirical theologians were packing the bar as I got back from the meetings late last night.)

What the (if you will pardon the contextually improper intensifier) hell is that about? Theology, as its name implies, is the study of God. Theists and atheists disagree about his existence, but surely they are as one that God is something outside observable nature (either because he's supernatural, or because he simply isn't there). So how, one would love to know, are these theologians studying him empirically? I mean, they must have instruments that neutrino-hunters would love to get their hands on.

Now, it's easy to see how there could be an empirical study of religion (and that's exactly what a number of sociologists and anthropologists do). But that, of course, is another kettle of fish altogether. And no, these guys were not devotees of some earthly idol that one might weigh and measure in the lab. So far as I can tell they were all mainstream Christians. I wish I'd had the chance to ask one of them how he goes about his empirical studies of the Almighty.

The obvious explanation, I suppose, is that the International Institute does not empirically study God so much as theology itself; they are as it were not theologians but theologilogians. Still, they had a definite religious tone about them; it is not as though they were sociologists of religion (who might as easily be unbelievers as believers, and whose belief or unbelief would, in the professional context, be irrelevant). Perhaps they do not, for example, hook up wires to the wafer during a communion service; perhaps they are merely engaged in the study of their own profession rather than its professed object. But surely, for professing Christians (and theologians no less!), that is somewhat, erm, inward looking, isn't it?