The phenomenological method was brought to the United States primarily by the German-American historian of religions Joachim Wach (1898–1955), who established Religionswissenschaft (Science of Religion) in Chicago and was thus the founder of the modern “Chicago school” (though his successor, Mircea Eliade, has a rather different slant). Wach was concerned with emphasizing three aspects of religion—the theoretical (or mental; i.e., religious ideas and images), the practical (or behavioral), and the institutional (or social); and because of his concern for the study of religious experience, he interested himself in the sociology of religion, attempting to indicate how religious values tended to shape the institutions that expressed them. Wach, however, was not committed to a religious neutralism in his use of the idea of a “science of religion.” For him, Religionswissenschaft deepens the sense of the numinous and strengthens, rather than paralyzes, religious impulses.

Mircea Eliade (1907– ), a Romanian scholar who emigrated to the United States after World War II, has had a wide influence, partly because of his substantive studies on yoga (a Hindu meditation technique) and on shamanism (both these major works are now regarded as classical studies of their subjects) and partly because of his later writings, which attempt to synthesize data from a wide variety of cultures. The synthesis incorporates a theory of myth and history. Eliade was also a founder of the journal History of Religions, which expresses the “Chicago school” viewpoint. Eliade has been somewhat influenced by Jung, both in his psychological interpretations of certain religious experiences (such as those attained in the practice of yoga) and more importantly in his attempt to give an interpretation in depth to the mythic material over which he ranges so widely. He also affirms strongly the importance of the history of religions in the intellectual world and is thus concerned to emphasize its unique and positive role in providing a “creative hermeneutics” (critical interpretive method) of man’s religious and existential condition. Two important elements in the theory of Eliade are, first, that the distinction between the sacred and the profane is fundamental to religious thinking and is to be interpreted existentially (the symbols of religion are, typically, profane in literal interpretation but are of cosmic significance when viewed as signs of the sacred); and, second, that archaic religion is to be contrasted with the linear, historical view of the world. The latter essentially comes from biblical religion; the former viewpoint tends to treat time cyclically and mythically—referring to foundational events, such as the creation, the beginning of the human race, and the Fall of man, on to illud tempus (the sacred primordial time), which is re-enacted in the repetitions of the ritual and in the retelling of the myth. Though Christianity has contained archaic elements, in essence it is linear and historical. Thus, faith in Christianity involves a kind of fall from archaic timelessness, and secularization—in which the overt symbolism of religion is driven underground into the unconscious—is a second fall. Eliade is not very explicit about his meaning beyond this point. Not only is he concerned with descriptive phenomenology, in which context his analysis of the religious functions of time and space is most illuminating, but also with a kind of metaphysical speculation (as exemplified in his idea of the “fall”).