Welcome to the Divinity Divulged podcast! The first podcastseries from the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. In each episode we’ll be taking a look at one of the fascinating research projects happening within the Faculty through conversations with the researcher and an expert guest working in their field. With dialogue aimed at all of thosestudying or exploring religious studies across all levels, you can find details on how this episode relates to A Level and Scottish Highers Specifications as well as a glossary below.

For this episode we are joined by Prof Joseph Webster, Professor of the Anthropology of Religion in the in the Faculty of Divinity here in Cambridge, to talk through Joe’s ethnographic fieldwork amongst Jehovah’s Witness communities in Northern Ireland and beyond. Joining us alongside him is Loïc Bawidaman, PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at theUniversity of Zurich.  

Here Joe talks about how his time cleaning windows andstanding on literature carts has formed his understanding of the moral hermeneutical, and eschatological commitments of JW’s.

Glossary

Eschatology – Theological understandings of the endof this present world and what might lay beyond it.

Ethnography - An anthropological research methodoften involving immersive fieldwork that seeks to understand human culturesfrom the perspective of research participants.

Evangelism – The spreading of the gospel through interpersonalengagement.

Jehovah – A form of the Hebrew name for God thatappears in the Bible.

Ontological – Debates concerned with the nature ofbeing.

A Level Specifications –

AQA

2B Christianity:

Sources of wisdom and authority

Expressions of religious identity

Self, death and afterlife

Christianity, migration and religious pluralism

Pearson Edexcel

Philosophy of Religion

6 Influences of developments in religious belief

6.1 Views about life after death across a range of religioustraditions

OCR

2c Developments in Christian thought

Death and the Afterlife

Scottish Highers Specifications

SQA

Christianity

Beliefs

Judgement; Heaven and Hell

Practices

Christian action; the Christian community

Theme Tune - Terminate the Funk by Dub Terminator. Used under Creative Commons License.