The proper object of Religious Studies is Religion, ostensibly a set of human expressions and performances that merits a humanistic or social-scientific analysis in accord with our academic approach to other types of human behaviors. The distinction between Theology, which presumes and addresses supernatural or divine realities, and Religious Studies, which does not, is predicated on this identification of the subject-matter of a secular, or humanistic, or scientific approach to the study of Religion, one which is not required to bow to the dictates of Theology, confessional or otherwise, nor address Theology's subject-matter, nor be bound by Theology's methods.

Yet the contemporary practice and conceptualization of Religious Studies as a field not only distinct from Theology, but a worthy endeavor in its own right and on its own terms, is predicated on a further assumption: that “Religion” is a coherent category in humanistic, social-scientific, or generally non-theological academic terms, that is, an empirical category or a descriptively nominal one. Such a claim is critically necessary for any assertion of Religious Studies as a discipline. Disciplinary identity assumes a distinctive approach to a taxonomically coherent entity. The coherence of such entities as “literature,” “society,” “culture,” and “psychology,” for example, dictates a distinctive set of tools and approaches that respect the fundamental character of the phenomena that constitute the entity.