The Religious Studies Project

In this episode, Richard McGregor discusses his new book, Islam and the Devotional Object: Seeing Religion in Egypt and Syria with Candace Mixon. Why do scholars of religion have such a variety of incomplete and messy tools to “follow the objects”? Find out with the curious stories of devotional objects from Cairo and Damascus. Two rationales inspired the book, McGregor notes. First, while there are “many impressive objects in the living practice of Islam,” the popular narrative is that Islam “is mistrustful and even hostile to images, representation, and sensory indulgences.” What can we do to resolve this difference? Second, our “imperfect tools for making sense of… objects of devotion” led him to consider the role of aesthetics and the complex histories of devotional materials, especially before and after the impact of colonialism. Listen in to their conversation as they consider the limits of theological or religious agendas that encourage scholars to ask who controls our understanding of objects like the mahmal (a ceremonial palanquin used in the Hajj) when they resist neat models of signification?

At the height of the Jim Crow era in Chicago, Noble Drew Ali founded the Moorish Science Temple of America. Using the language of Islam, he articulated a new religio-racial identity that subverted the racially oppressive lens of “negro” that had been used for decades as a powerful legal tool to subvert the rights of people of color after the Civil War. Ali and his followers fought the legacy of Dredd Scott and other cases with their own legal premise: those descended from Africans would be better served by self-identifying as “Moorish.” In this interview with Spencer Dew about his book The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali, Dew presents such identity formation as the part of larger strategies of legal maneuvering that worked to give Black persons the full rights that had been denied to them as American citizens on the basis of race. “Citizenship as salvation” was the movement’s motto, and the union of the legal and racial was an opportunity to reimagine themselves through new frameworks that worked to change the circumstances and the categories that had been thrust upon them.

Environmental issues take center stage in this month’s episode of Discourse!, hosted by Michael Munnik with guests Suzanne Owen and Daniel Gorman Jr. How is the media covering the intersection of religion and the latest environmental issues? Listen and find out! First the groups speaks on some of the differences in major news publications and their coverage of environmental issues. Opening with the broader issue of how such stories appear (or do not) in major news outlets, Suzanne Owen offers some discourse analysis. Who is covering environmental issues so regularly their masthead categories reflect that attention? This is a moment to acknowledge how some political affiliations on both the left and the right can make it harder to sell stories about both religion and the environment. Despite those challenges, one issue pushing that intersection of politics, religion, and the environment into the front pages is the election of the United States’ second Catholic President, Joe Biden. Dan Gorman cites Elizabeth Dias’ article in the New York Times, “In Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity,” as one place we’re seeing coverage of the role of Catholic environmentalism being discussed openly. Such issues of identity and politics lead the group to talk about the ongoing Farmers’ Protests in India (and the twitterstorm involving Rihanna and Greta Thunberg). Noting that the location of the striking workers is predominantly Sikh, the group looks to larger issues of religious and national identity under President Narendra Modi. Finally, Dan suggests that the Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest is one place where we can see significant attention being drawn to the union of environmental and religious activism. Is climate concern religious practice for progressive Jews in the U.S?

Religious studies approaches to the environment have long privileged Western ecological frameworks. Anna Gade’s work, Muslim Environmentalisms reframes this area, both critiquing and building upon the tools of religious studies (RS) and environmental humanities (EH). Religious studies, for its part, has privileged Jewish and Christian understandings of key ideas such as nature and wilderness. This bias has left the field less capable of responding to the rising need for studies about efforts globally by many religious groups to address climate crises. EH has also suffered from this overreliance, and Gade’s work identifying the different approaches toward the environment of her Indonesian Muslim interlocutors is a critical step forward. Interviewed by Lauren Osborne and David McConeghy, this episode discusses the challenges this interdisciplinary work faces and shares some of the reasons why the inclusion of Muslim perspectives into the broader conversation about religion and the environment is so desperately needed today.

What is a myth? What might we mean by myth-making? What can an approach to how people make myths and tell stories in their everyday lives bring to the study of ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’? And what might Gandalf and Captain Picard have to do with any of this? Joining Chris to discuss myth-making and its role among non-religious people, and climate and environmental activists is Dr. Tim Stacey of Leiden University. Don’t miss our earlier episode with Dr. Stacey about Myth and post-liberalism or his book.

In this episode, RSP co-editor Breann Fallon sat down with long-time friend of the podcast, Professor Carole Cusack of the University of Sydney to discuss sacred trees. Cusack has published widely on the topic including her 2011 monograph The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and a recent special volume of the Journal of Religion and Nature edited by Cusack. Beginning with Cusack’s journey to studying the sacred tree, the conversation turns to specific examples of the Fortingall Yew and Glastonbury Thorn, both of which connect to Christianity. Turning to contemporary examples, Fallon and Cusack discuss the 2020 destruction of the Djab Wurrung tree in Australia.

Back in 2011, Charlotte Ward and David Voas published an article addressing the synthesis of New Age spirituality with conspiracy thinking as “conspirituality.” A decade later, their analysis seems critical for understanding figures like the QAnon Shaman, widespread anti-vaccine and COVID-19 disinformation campagins, and, more broadly, the rapid spread of America of America’s “paranoid politics” as much of the media’s dominant form of dialogue about issues ranging from vaccines to climate change. In this January episode of our current events podcast, Discourse!, Savannah Finver speaks with Candace Mixon and Suzanne Newcombe as the team wrestles with the QAnon Shaman and the January 6th attack on the U.S. Presidential election certification, pandemic anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns, and growing evidence of the “conspirituality.” Be sure to take a look at the at-home links below. Don’t forget! If you see a current events article or story you think we should include in our monthly Discourse! episodes, please send it to editors@religousstudieproject.com or tweet it to us @projectrs. This month’s links include: Chris Cuomo interviews Q Anon ShamanSenator Susan Collins admits she believed “Iranians” were attacking the White HouseLitchfield Cathedral turned into a vaccination center. RSPH struggles with low South Asian vaccine ratesReligion Dispatches piece on the New Age blending with the radical right Original Source for “Conspirituality” by Ward and Voas: Charlotte Ward & Prof. David Voas (2011). “The Emergence of Conspirituality,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 26:1, 103-121, DOI: 10.1080/13537903.2011.539846

Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s new book, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, pulls few punches. It begins with and dwells deeply on what Baldwin, a towering mid-20th century American literary figure, called the “lie at the heart of America.” The lie is the value gap — the ways America has elevated the worth of white lives over those of people in other racialized groups. Baldwin’s unfettered honesty about this lie, explains Dr. Glaude, means that we have a chance to imagine a world that is otherwise. Just as Baldwin went abroad as an “elsewhere” from which to renew and sustain his critique of American identity, today Dr. Glaude urges us to begin again. We can, he argues, “choose to be better. We need only build a world where that choice can be made with relative ease.” The choice to see things differently confronts the hard truths America hides from itself, especially those which are bound up in the origin stories Americans tell ourselves about who we are and where we have come from. To see those truths as Baldwin did means the opportunity to begin again, starting with recognizing past hurts and ongoing harms without letting go of the promise of redemption or even salvation that follows. On this 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, please enjoy this timely and critical discussion about race and religion in the U.S.

Can you believe it has been 10 years? After more than 350 episodes, over 600 contributors, and the rapidly approaching milestone of a million downloads, we’re still here doing the weekly work of sharing research in the critical study of religion. In this special episode of the Religious Studies Project podcast, the RSP team reflects on the legacy of the project and the future of our work. Co-hosts Breann Fallon and David McConeghy solicited reflections from current and former team members, and this episode features some of the highlights including comments by founders Chris Cotter and David Robertson; interviewers Candace Mixon, Sidney Castillo, and Dan Gorman; board members Russell McCutcheon and Carole Cusack, and editors Thomas Coleman and Lauren Osborne. With extreme gratitude for the many, many contributors and listeners to the Religious Studies Project for a decade of scholarship, we’re proud to say, “Thanks for listening!”

Welcome to our MidYear Special 2020! It’s a COVID-style international spectacular for the ninth(!) annual RSP mid-season special. It’s time to play… the Weakest Link! Join Andie Alexander, Jonathon O’Donnel, Titus Hjelm, Naomi Goldenberg, Sidney Castillo, Russell McCutcheon, Ray Radford, and Megan Goodwin as David Robertson fires questions at them and Chris Cotter remotely operates PowerPoint! Who will win the coveted fictional research funding? Aaron Hughes – we apologise in advance! If this gets you in the festive mood, you might want to check out our back catalogue of festive specials: 2012 – Only 60 Seconds!2013 – Nul Point!2014 – Masterbrain!2015 – Fourteen to One!2016 – The Unverifiable Truth-Claim!2017 – Scrape My Barrel!2018 – The Deadline2019 – Only 60 Seconds! (take 2)