The Religious Studies Project

Norman Lear was a central figure in American television in the 1970s. His media productions like All in the Family were deeply activist, reflecting his ideas about what kinds of dialogue and reflection were needed to preserve American society in an era of sharp divisions over social and political issues that came to be called the Culture Wars. As a voice for progressivism and liberalism, Lear articulated a powerful vision of the public square where civility was the shared root for multicultural America. In this conversation, Dr. Benji Rolsky frames the public square as the central discursive space for mid 20th century liberals, one which not only gave them great social leverage but also limited their future strategic options to respond to the emergence of the religious right as a consolidated political block starting with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In this month’s episode of Discourse!, Theo Wildcroft, Dan Gorman and special emergency guest Vivian Asimos discuss the US Supreme Court’s relationship to Christianity, how the Independent dealt with criticism of a review of a book critical of paganism, and religion, abuse and the idea of a ‘witch hunt’ in yoga and academia. Oh and something called coronavirus? Links for items discussed in this episode:   “With religion-related rulings on the horizon, U.S. Christians see Supreme Court favorably” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/03/with-religion-related-rulings-on-the-horizon-u-s-christians-see-supreme-court-favorably/   “Pagans express outrage and disappointment over ‘book review'” https://wildhunt.org/2020/01/pagans-expresses-outrage-and-disappointment-over-book-review.html   “Shielded for Decades, A Yoga Leader’s Alleged Sexual Abuse Finally Comes Under Fire” https://gen.medium.com/shielded-for-decades-a-yoga-leaders-alleged-sexual-abuse-finally-comes-under-fire-97b79ddf990b   “Oxford dean accused of failing to report child sexual assault claim” https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/mar/04/oxford-dean-accused-of-failing-to-report-child-sexual-assault-claim   “Master of Deceit: How Yogi Bhajan Used Kundalini Yoga for Money, Sex and Power” https://gurumag.com/master-of-deceit-how-yogi-bhajan-used-kundalini-yoga-for-money-sex-and-power/   Source for Featured Image Screenshot of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer with the flags of countries afflicted by Covid-19: https://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/2020/03/20/embracing-the-grace-of-covid-19/  

This second interview with Timothy Fitzgerald covers his later work, from Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (2007) and Religion and Politics in International Relations: The Modern Myth (2011). In these works, thinking about the historical development of the category “religion” leads to consideration of other ‘modern’ categories which make up the colonial epistemé. If religion is deconstructed, where does that leave the other categories that use or rely on it? What happens to its common opposites like “the secular”, “science”, “liberalism” or even “politics”? Fitzgerald argues that this mutually-dependent signalling system largely emerged in the late 17th century.  As rhetorical terms expressing specific class interests and aspirations in concrete situations of power, this system of signals originated in the context of the ancient regimes and sacred Monarchies of Christian Europe. Since then, each category has been continually contested, with shifting and unstable meanings. Now they have become so capacious and universalised that they have no clear boundaries, and we cannot properly distinguish between them. Yet these ideas have, over time and through repetition, become normalised and neutralised such that they appear as common sense. Today they form the basic categories for the organisation of our institutions, including academia and universities. Listen to the first part of David G. Robertson’s interview with Timothy Fitzgerald on The Ideology of Religious Studies here: Episode 322 “The Problem with ‘Religion’ and Related Categories”

Religious Nationalism is the focus of a newly released book by journalist Katherine Stewart called The Power Worshippers (Bloomsbury Press). Framing her work as a decade-plus interest in the political and rhetorical moves of conservative Christians in the United States, Stewart raises an alarm about the distributed assault she sees on the wall separating Church and State. In a politically charged moment in the United States, Stewart’s work emerges within a growing body of public-facing literature that sees intimate connections between radical religious groups and the ongoing struggle for the political and cultural power to shape American life.

Beliefs are not written in stone. They change over time and sometimes we hold contradictory beliefs. Taking beliefs as changing and nuanced rather than fixed reveals the role of narratives and cultural context in shaping beliefs.  In this week’s episode, Sidney Castillo’s conversation with Ülo Valk introduces us to some of the ways in which this process occurs in the form of vernacular religion. Focusing on the personal nature of these changes, Valk sees beliefs as fluid, which problematizes the stability of other categories such as knowledge and truth. Especially when we express beliefs as narratives, we change the way we understand the world. Valk’s research in Mayong, a village in northeast India, shows how beliefs about the use of magic, divination, gods, and mantras, allow for personalized and open-ended cultural traditions ripe for innovation. This podcast was recorded and produced in the context of the 17th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), “Religion – Continuations and Disruptions” held in Tartu, June 25 to June 29, 2019. We kindly thank the EASR Committee and the University of Tartu scientific committee, organising team, and volunteers for the support provided during this process.

Can a new journal expand how we think of America when we focus on religion? These two categories, religion and America, are at the center of American Religion, a new semiannual publication from Indiana University Press edited by Sarah Imhoff and M. Cooper Harriss. In this episode recorded at the 2019 AAR conference in San Diego, Imhoff and Harriss speak about what it’s like to found a new journal and where it will fit in the landscape of scholarship on religion in America. Be sure to visit the journal’s website, which hosts a number of digital-only features and details on subscriptions: american-religion.org/. Sarah Imhoff and Cooper Harriss, editors of American Religion

Tim Fitzgerald is one of the foundational figures in the critical study of religion, and his seminal volume, The Ideology of Religious Studies, was published twenty years ago this year. In this interview – the first of a two-part retrospective – we discuss his career and how his studies in Hinduism and his time spent in Japan led him to question the relationship of categories like caste and ritual to the broader category ‘religion’. His realisation was that religion is such a broad category that it can include almost everything. We discuss the historical development of the category, and its roots in Protestant theological ideas, and the political movements of the eighteenth century. This leads into a critique of the essentialist assumptions hidden by the category, and the phenomenological ideas in its use in academia, and its function as a tool in power relations.

In this episode of Discourse, host Breann Fallon sat down with Sierra Lawson and Sidney Castillo to discuss current affairs issues that relate to religion. Sidney raised the very recent congress elections in Peru (held on January 26) and the role Christianity and New Religious Movements have on voting. Sierra brought to the table a novel which is receiving much media attention, perhaps not for the right reason, Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt. Cummins accepted a seven-figure sum for this book on the immigrant experience. Both the book and the American publishing industry at large have received negative attention for their lack of Latino representation and the homogenising of both Latino and immigrant narratives. Using this as a springboard, Sierra, Sidney, and Breann discuss notion of diversity in the Religious Studies publishing world as well as the prominence of “American-civil-religion” stabilising narratives in the American literature and entertainment scene.

What is Artificial Intelligence and why might we want to consider it in relation to ‘religion’? What religion-related questions might be raised by AI? Are these ‘religious’ questions or ‘Christian’/’post-Christian’ ones? What ‘religious’ functions might AI serve? In what ways do popular discourses about AI intersect with religion-related discourses? Do narratives of AI form part of a teleological atheist narrative, or do they perpetuate prevalent tropes associated with ‘established’ or ‘new’ religious movements? And what are the intersections of AI and religion with issues such as slavery, human identity, affect and agency? This week, Chris is joined by Dr Beth Singler of the University of Cambridge to discuss these issues and many more. This podcast builds on a roundtable discussion released on the RSP in February 2017, featuring Beth, Chris, Michael Morelli, Vivian Asimos and Jonathan Tuckett, titled “AI and Religion: An Initial Conversation” and a special issue of the RSP journal Implicit Religion, co-edited by Dr Singler, on Artificial Intelligence and Religion, published in 2017. Featured Image (human and robot fingers touching) credit: https://claudeai.wiki/

This week’s podcast with Professor Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst explores the University of Vermont’s new “Religious Literacy for Professionals” certificate. Framing religious literacy as social justice, Morgenstein Fuerst explains how her program is trying to reach undergraduates in other professional tracks at the 10 colleges around her university. With a powerful message for her students about the impact and relevance of religious studies coursework, this new program looks to prepare students for the modern America where religious affiliation is down but the need to be skilled “readers” of religion in culture is more pressing than ever.