Like Rodney Dangerfield, we philosophers of religion get no respect. As philosopher of religion Nelson Pike puts it,
If you are in a company of people of mixed occupations, and somebody asks what you do, and you say you are a college professor, a glazed look comes into his eye. If you are in a company of professors from various departments, and somebody asks what is your field, and you say philosophy, a glazed look comes into the eye. If you are at a conference of philosophers, and somebody asks what you are working on, and you say philosophy of religion . . . [Quoted in D. Dennett, Breaking the Spell, 2006, p. 33)
I'll go Pike one better. I am an academically unaffiliated philosopher of religion. Could there be anything more contemptible?
First of all, I take religion seriously, and not merely as an object of scholarly investigation: I take it seriously as one of several (possible) routes to the truth. Thus I don't study it as a load of dead lore and strange doctrines and practices. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Religious documents, practices, and beliefs are facts in the world and like any facts they can be studied. Pure theory need beg no one's indulgence, and social utility be damned. Whenever I hear someone ask what social good such-and-such is, I think of Stalin and the Commies and my Italian blood begins to boil.
But my interest in religion is not merely historical, or doxographical, or sociological any more than my interest in science is merely historical, or doxographical, or sociological. Science is more than a lot of opinions and practices. It is a route to truth. To put it bluntly, science gets at reality. I think of religion in the same way. (It is worth noting that my claim about science is a philosophical, not a scientific, claim; as such, it requires philsophical, not scientific, defense.)
Second, I am a philosopher of religion. It is bad enough that I concern myself with religion, and worse still that I take it seriously as a possible route to truth; what takes the cake is that I approach it with the tools of philosophy of all things.
Third, I do all this without making a penny from it. Although philosophy is said to bake no bread, some philosophers earn their bread and fill their bellies from it. I once did myself. But I will have none of that now: I deplete my belly from philosophy. In plain English, I am not paid to do philosophy, I pay to do it.
And in a society which attaches value to an activity in the measure that it turns a buck, that makes one odd man out. (For more on this theme, see Work, Money, Living, and Livelihood.)