The Religious Studies Project

Religious freedom has emerged in recent years as a pivotal topic for the study of religion. It is also the subject of heated debates within many countries and among human rights advocates globally, where competing groups advance radically different ideas about how religious freedom operates and what it protects. While for marginalized and minority communities, this freedom can provide important avenues of appeal, at the same time, governing regimes of religious freedom have most often served the interests of those in power and opened up new channels of coercion by the state.

This conversation with Tisa Wenger, author of Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal, starts with the question of how religious freedom talk functions to shape the category of religion and to transform what counts as religious in the modern world. Using Wenger’s ethnographic and historical research on the Pueblo Indians, we discuss how local, national, and international regimes of religious freedom have shaped (or even produced) new religious formations, ways of being religious, norms of good vs. bad religion, or distinctions between the religious and the secular. In short, how has religious freedom (re)produced religion and its others in the modern world?

This month on Discourse! join David G. Robertson, Vivian Asimos and Aled Thomas at the BASR as they discuss the mythology of Zelda, austerity and evangelical Christians, and the potential arson of Crowley’s Loch Ness redoubt, Boleskine House.

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Since its inception, evolutionary theory has sought to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding biological processes and their degree of influence in the ecology of the behavior of living beings. Such an approach has managed to explain how the pressure mechanism of natural selection has allowed the emergence of biological systems that exhibit social behavior (e.g. ants, dolphins, and Hominidae in general). Yet, when trying to address the ever-increasing complexity that grows within the social and cultural evolution of different societies, this explanation does not suffice.

In this week’s podcast, professor Armin Geertz outlines an answer elaborating on the arguments presented in his co-authored book The Emergence and Evolution of Religion by Means of Natural Selection. He argues that there are multilevel selection processes that happen within different sociocultural formations, and these are key to understanding how religion has evolved throughout history.

He proposes 4 ways in which additional selection pressures occur, these are named after prominent names in the history of sociological thought: Spencerian type 1, Durkheimian, Spencerian type 2, and Marxian. Respectively, the first is related to group formation based symbolic identification, the second relates to the group competition that happens within an environmental niche, the third refers to when polities developed complex institutions capable of wide regional or global expansión, and the fourth is when in a society, there is discrimination against specific groups, which could lead to a revolution or to that group to be put down.

In all of these, religion plays a key role in articulating, contrasting, or supporting different ways of social engagement within a society and between societies as well. Understanding these mechanisms and the way they interplay with religion allows for a complementary framework derived from natural selection towards sociocultural evolution.

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.

Asma Uddin is the author of When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom. In this book, Uddin examines an alarming trend to redefine Islam as a political ideology, not a religion. In our conversation, we track the history of this movement to redefine Islam and its implications for the rights of Muslims. We discuss the widespread presumption among American progressives that courts tend to protect religious freedom for Christians, but not for Muslims, and we examine particular stories that support and problematize that narrative. In particular, Uddin provides vivid examples of how American courts have reacted to arguments that Islam is not a religion. Uddin explains how and why Muslims and their allies disagree about whether religious freedom laws offer (or should offer) necessary or sufficient legal frameworks for protecting the rights of religious minorities in the United States.

In the latter part of the conversation, we discuss Uddin’s approach to writing the book. She describes how she balanced the desires to better equip people who already acknowledge that Islam is a religion and, on the other hand, to convince those who view Islam only as a political ideology to change their minds.

This month on Discourse, Breann Fallon, Carole Cusack and Ray Radford approach the Australian news from a Religious Studies perspective. We cover the appeal of Cardinal George Pell, the drama around Israel Folau, and the impact of Christianity on the recent Australian federal election results.

This week’s episode is a bit special. We’re sharing the newest episode of Discourse, a spin-off show our Patreon supporters have been enjoying this year. Discourse has a globally rotating cast of RSP editors, friends and guests, who take a critical look at the discourse on ‘religion’ in the news and media! If you enjoy the episode, you can enjoy monthly episodes by subscribing just a dollar a month at patreon.com/projectrs.

This month on Discourse, Breann Fallon, Carole Cusack and Ray Radford approach the Australian news from a Religious Studies perspective. We cover the appeal of Cardinal George Pell, the drama around Israel Folau, and the impact of Christianity on the recent Australian federal election results.

Listeners to the Religious Studies Project, particularly in a European context, might be quite familiar with the sight of a former church building that has now turned derelict, or is being used for a purposes that perhaps it wasn’t intended for, or is being rejuvenated by another ‘religious’ community, another Christian community, or put to some other use. Chris is joined today by Daan Beekers to discuss spatial contestations and conversions, particularly looking at (former) church buildings in the Dutch context. We discuss some of the research projects he has been involved in, before looking at two particular case studies – the Fatih Mosque, and the Chassé Dance Studios – where Church ‘conversions’ have taken place. We discuss the various discursive entanglements surrounding these buildings, and the contested notions of heritage that come from different constituencies who are invested in their presence. Finally, we ask if there is anything necessarily ‘religious’ going on here… (Unsurprisingly, the answer is, ‘it’s complicated… but there’s nothing sui generis).

Listeners may be interested to check out Daan’s recent blog post, Converted Churches: Matters of Entanglement, Heritage and Home.

They are also encouraged to listen to our previous podcasts with Kim Knott on “Religion, Space and Locality” and Peter Collins on “Religion and the Built Environment.”

The use of source languages for the academic study of religion has had a long-standing presence in scholarly production. Especially useful in the comparative study of myth, philology has contributed in shedding light on the meaning of old texts and other written records of ancient civilizations, as well as finding linguistic convergences and contrasts among them.
In this week’s podcasts, Dr. Paola Corrente gives us insights in how the use of the philological approach can be beneficial for, not only providing a common and solid framework for comparative research but also, for providing more suitable ways of classification according to linguistic criteria. Her work on the “dying gods” –i.e. gods that die but come back to life– of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, which draws on the concept formulated by James George Frazer, provides a case for this exercise.
On the last segment of the interview, she opens a debate on how scholars of religion tend to reject classifications when studying religion comparatively. In this regard, she appeals tacitly to what another likeminded author has identified as “religiocentrism” (Diez de Velasco 2005), that is, the methodological bias that a researcher could have when studying other forms of religiosity or spirituality.

Science fiction and video games are more visible than ever as their popularity reaches record numbers. From classic arcade games like Asteroids to modern open-world sandbox simulators like No Man’s Sky that require hundreds of hours to complete fully, science fiction is one of the most common gaming genres. This podcast explores the ways religion and science fiction appear together in these cultural products, asks how gamers see the value of this play, and how we seek belief in things that are ‘out of this world’ as a means to escape the present by sharing our hopes about the future.