The Religious Studies Project

In this episode RSP co-editor Breann Fallon talks to Dr Avril Alba of the University of Sydney about the tension between the secular and sacred in Holocaust museums. Having worked in museum curation, as well academia, Alba gives a specific insight into the sacrality of museums, the creation of such spaces, and how this area of study came to be. Speaking on Holocaust museums specifically, Alba highlights the tensions between Jewish ritual and religious practices with the secular notion of a museum. In particular, questions of theodicy, the role of the Holocaust museum in the mourning process, and the centrality of education play a key role in her analysis. This podcast highlights the complex nature of ritual and religion in the experience of public places of history, as well as the liminality of such purpose-built sites of commemoration.

In this episode, Dr. Maxinne Connolly-Panagopolus asks Dr. Ullrich Relebogilwe Kleinhempel how we might better understand and engage with South African Shamanism and Mysticism. Beginning with Sangomas or spiritual mediators, Dr. Kleinhempel introduces some of the types of Shaman which exist in the South African context such as the herbalist, who learns mystical powers from plants; the diviner, who uses oracles such as bones as objects for mediumship; and the seer, who relies on inspiration from dreams, telepathy and intuition. Turning to the complex configuration of race, heritage, and culture present in South Africa, the conversation moves to a discussion of  white Sangomas, and how these individuals are perceived by their community. Finally, within the region’s diverse religious landscape, Kleinhempel shares how Sangomas sometimes navigate multiple religious identities. Listen in for a discussion that encourages scholars to reflect on how they will negotiate the demands of critical inquiry alongside their own personal experiences or competing worldviews. For more on Sangoma, Umbanda, and other specific elements of this conversation, please consider the following resources: • Hall, J. (2009). Sangoma: my odyssey into the spirit world of Africa. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.• Kleinhempel, U. R. (2017). Covert Syncretism: The Reception of South Africa’s Sangoma Practise and Spirituality by “Double Faith” in the Contexts of Christianity and of Esotericism. Open Theology, 3(1), 642-661.• Kleinhempel, U. R. (2017). Spreading an Arcane Religion on the World Wide Web: Paradoxies of Transmission of the Contemporary Mysteries ‘Cult of Umbanda. Mistiko-ezotericheskie dvizhenie v teorii i praktike-mistitsizm i ezoterizm v mire teknologii, VIII mezhdunarodnaia nauchnaia konferentsia. St. Petersburg, 60-71.• Kleinhempel, U. R. (2018). White Sangomas: the manifestation of Bantu forms of shamanic calling among whites in South Africa. REVER-Revista de Estudos da Religião, 18(1), 143-173.• Contemporary Mysteries’ Cult of Umbanda – video lecture, 8th ASEM conference https://www.academia.edu/26147179/Contemporary_Mysteries_Cult_of_Umbanda_-_video_lecture_8th_ASEM_conference• Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African religions & philosophy. Heinemann.• Mlisa, N. L. R., & Nel, P. (2010). Ukuthwasa the training of Xhosa women as traditional healers: Ukuthwasa initiation of amagqirha and identity construction. Lap Lambert Academic.

In San Diego at the 2019 American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting, Dave McConeghy sat down with six early career scholars to discuss religious literacy in the context of the release of the AAR’s Religious Literacy Guidelines. The guidelines were a multi-year project funded by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, and speak not only to the needs of teachers in higher education like the panelists in this roundtable, but also more broadly to primary school education in the U.S.  The panelists gathered here represent significant voices in the next wave of changes to religious studies programs, where market pressures mean we must think deliberately about how to position religious studies within the academy to advance our field and its work. Among the central questions explored in this episode, perhaps the most fundamental is this: What is the role of our teaching and scholarly contexts on the way we approach religious literacy? If one-size cannot fit all, then what is different about religious literacy when it comes to a public versus a private college? What is the impact of teaching to a regional versus national student body? How do the varied missions expressed by our universities encourage or limit our dialogue with the critical theoretical wings of our discipline? Join us for a lively conversation with Richard Newton, Chris Jones, Rebekka King, Bradley Onishi, Kevin Minister, and Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand. Exclusive action shots during recording by David McConeghy:

It’s ideology, religion and conspiracy all the way in this month’s Discourse! David G. Robertson is joined by Suzanne Owen and Craig Martin to discuss the Sun’s mockery of pagans, problems with the Guardian’s headline that people are returning to the Church, coronavirus conspiracies in India targetting Muslims, and how “idiology” (or one idiology, anyway) is pushing the religion out of religious studies. Stories discussed: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11512177/boris-must-stop-breakdown-of-lockdown-or-nastier-one-on-way/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/british-public-turn-to-prayer-as-one-in-four-tune-in-to-religious-services https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-targeting-muslims-spread-in-india https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/04/how-political-ideology-is-pushing-religion-out-of-religious-studies/?fbclid=IwAR2mPiNs7mejrWvc1QV14jVU2M2CJ4zboaMpZD-LhLE4CLaskpCz0Xx4Ors

At the 2019 American Academy of Religion conference in San Diego, California, Brett Esaki sat down with Jolyon Thomas to discuss Thomas’ new book Faking Liberties and the complex intersection of religious freedom, empire, and racialization in the post-war relationship between Japan and the United States. The processes or projects of secularization, says Thomas, were instrument of American empire. By looking at the ways discourses about religious freedom regulated race, gender, and ritual practices in occupation-era Japan, we can see the double-standard of what America has advocated for abroad versus practiced at home. Thomas calls for deeper scholarly engagement with the category of “freedom” and how freedom of religious expression has been racially coded as white in the United States. It is a cautionary tale with important pedagogical and institutional lessons. If we find that discussing “diversity looks like activism,” he suggests, then “we have a huge problem” that reveals why diversity in the academy is essential for discussing secularism, religious freedom, and religion today.

Happy May the Fourth! Today we bring you a special episode of The Religious Studies Project to celebrate 2020’s International Star Wars Day. After the release of Star Wars film in 1977, it became obvious that creator George Lucas had tapped into something profound. Over the next few decades, Star Wars became a behemoth worth billions of dollars and a multi-media franchise spanning film, television, video games, comic books, novels, theme parks, toys, and much more. Since 2012, the RSP has touched on Star Wars many times, most often in discussions of invented, fictional, or hyper-real religions. Enjoy the selections from six different episodes as we learn why this franchise and other popular cultural institutions are important sites for the production of identity and the construction of the category of religion. To hear the original recordings, please visit the following episodes: Episode 321: Artificial Intelligence and Religion — Christopher Cotter interviews Beth Singler (February 2020) Episode 281: Slenderman and Online Mythology — Ross Downing interviews Vivian Asimos (February 2019) Episode 235: Hyper-Real Religion, Digital Capitalism and the Pygmalion Effect — Sammy Bishop interviews Adam Possamai (November 2017) Episode 190: Categorising Religion from Case Studies to Methodology — Breann Fallon interviews Teemu Taira (September 2016) Episode 12: Fiction-based Religions — Christopher Cotter interviews Markus Davidsen (April 2012) Episode 3: Invented Religions — David G Roberston interviews Carole Cusack (January 2012)

Boxers routinely cultivate personal brands that integrate religious, ethnic, and national identities says Professor Arlene Sanchez Walsh in this conversation with David McConeghy about the relationship between sport and self. To what degree are boxer’s religious affiliations only as skin deep as their tattoos? What are the goals for boxers looking to integrate their personal narratives of religious conversion as elements of their professional identity? What are the different stakes for audiences or communities with longstanding support for the sport? In this moment of social distancing, please enjoy this moment of reflection on the intersections of sport and religion. No matter what sport you may find yourself a fan of, we hope that you can soon return to playing and watching it soon.

In April’s episode of Discourse!, Chris Cotter, Chris Silver and Savannah Finver place the current global situation relating to coronavirus front and centre in their discussion. Come for serious commentary but stay for some levity in the form of cats and dogs. Topics of discussion concern the adaption of certain practices for online spaces, the regulation of the ‘religious’ by the ‘secular’, state hardship funding for ‘religious’ institutions in the US, funeral practices, the excellent recent ‘You’re all Muslim” tweet, and comments on the NHS ‘as religion’ in the UK. Links for items discussed in this episode: • https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/news-comment/the-nhs-our-national-religion-2/ • https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ongoing-religious-services-spark-debate-faith-verses-safety/ • https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/news-comment/congregations-rise-as-worship-moves-to-the-internet/ • https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/06/828462517/another-break-from-the-past-government-will-help-churches-pay-pastor-salaries? On religion-related pet ownership: • https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jssr.12637 [Academic] • https://religionnews.com/2020/01/07/why-your-faith-may-predict-whether-you-love-cats-or-dogs/ • https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/01/07/commentary-atheists/ • http://urbanchristiannews.com/2020/01/study-shows-that-atheists-prefer-cats-while-christians-love-dogs/ • https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7855331/Churchgoers-likely-cats-atheists-study-finds.html

Accounts of Near Death Experiences will no doubt be very familiar to listeners of the RSP and the broader public. From fictional accounts such as the Wizard of Oz or Flatliners, to self-reports which grew in popularity in the mid-twentieth century, many of us will be know narrative tropes such as the tunnel, the life review, and the out of body experience. Existing research has tended to, on the one hand, focus on the pathological elements of Near Death Narratives – attempting to ‘explain away’ the phenomenon in reductionistic terms – or, on the other hand, view such accounts as substantive proof of a ‘world beyond’. In today’s podcast, we showcase an approach which accepts reports of Near Death Experiences as discourse, and attempts to understand them in their social, cultural, and historical context. Further, we ask what is the relationship between these narratives and contemporary discourse on ‘religion’? Joining Chris Cotter in this podcast is Professor Jens Schlieter, who has admirably addressed these questions and more in his recent book What Is It Like To Be Dead? Near-Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult (OUP 2018). In this episode, we discuss definitions of Near Death Experiences, how one might study reports of such experiences from a critical study of religion perspective, how such reports are related to modern societal developments such as ‘secularization’, individualization, and advances in medical science, as well as the impact of ‘religious’ meta-cultures upon these reports and the potential ‘religious’ functions they appear to serve.

In a co-edited volume, Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Contested Desires, Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen bring together innovative perspectives on the prevalence of images in religious traditions often described as harboring aniconistic tendencies. Should we really see these traditions as “anti-image”? This episode charts some of the major moves taking place in the volume, especially the presumption of the normative stance of aniconism in the study of these traditions. What if we turn instead to the aesthetic regimes of the religious traditions in question by  considering their shared habitus or the methods of “seeing”used by their members? Such a shift reveals the political nature of debates over images, and the power of iconoclasm. Referring to specific case studies from the volume, the conversation offers ideas about re-imagining and challenging the assumption by scholars that practitioners of religious traditions such as Islam, Judaism, or Christianity hold a contemptuous view of images. Perhaps an increased focus on aesthetic regimes rather than images can provide a superior way to analyze and select data for this area of religious studies.