James Leland Cox and the Development of Phenomenology of Religion as a Methodology

A cursory exploration of literature on phenomenology reveals one evident observation that the meaning of the term “phenomenology” among various scholars differs depending on the scholars’ academic discipline and context. In particular, three perspectives emerge. First, there are those who view phenomenology as a philosophy. Second, there are those that view phenomenology as a methodology in the study of religion that particularly assists with gathering and analysing data from fieldwork. Third, there are those, especially among Western and North American scholars, who regard the methodology of phenomenology as theology in disguise. This study is a response to two strictly related questions from critics of phenomenology. First, is phenomenology a philosophy or a methodology and, second, granted that it is a methodology, faced with an interview transcript, how does one process it in a Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological sense, to present and analyse data from fieldwork? To answer this two-fold research question the study carried out a systemic review of recent research on phenomenology to determine whether phenomenology is a philosophy or methodology. From the systemic review, the study concluded that at the early stages of its historical development, phenomenology was purely philosophical. However, at a later stage there was a paradigm shift from philosophical phenomenology to phenomenology as a methodology for conducting human science research. Following this conclusion, the study expanded James L. Cox’s views on phenomenology as a methodology to recommend specific guidelines for conducting human science research from the perspective of historical-typological phenomenology as the research methodology.