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In Support of BASR and the Study of Religion at Stirling
Below is the text sent on 4 September 2015 to the University of Stirling on behalf of NAASR’s Executive Council.
On behalf of the Executive Council of the North American Association for the Study of Religion, a member of the International Association for the History of Religions, we are writing you to offer our strong support of the September 3rd statement issued by the British Association for the Study of Religion. We agree that “Colleagues and students from Stirling have been at the forefront of critical study and debate about religion,” and that the academic and nondenominational study of religion “has a key role within higher education institutions.” Consequently, we echo their call for you to “reconsider the closure of an independent department that is greatly valued nationally and internationally.”
Sincerely,.
Books of Interest: Building God’s Kingdom
Julie J. Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (Oxford 2015).
For the last several decades, at the far fringes of American evangelical Christianity has stood an intellectual movement known as Christian Reconstruction. The proponents of this movement embrace a radical position: that all of life should be brought under the authority of biblical law as it is contained in both the Old and New Testaments. They challenge the legitimacy of democracy, argue that slavery is biblically justifiable, and support the death penalty for all manner of “crimes” described in the Bible including homosexuality, adultery, and Sabbath-breaking. But, as Julie Ingersoll shows in this fascinating new book, this “Biblical Worldview” shapes their views not only on political issues, but on everything from private property and economic policy to history and literature. Holding that the Bible provides a coherent, internally consistent, and all-encompassing worldview, they seek to remake the entirety of society–church, state, family, economy–along biblical lines.
Tracing the movement from its mid-twentieth-century origins in the writings of theologian and philosopher R.J. Rushdoony to its present-day sites of influence, including the Christian Home School movement, advocacy for the teaching of creationism, and the development and rise of the Tea Party, Ingersoll illustrates how Reconstructionists have broadly and subtly shaped conservative American Protestantism over the course of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Drawing on interviews with Reconstructionists themselves as well as extensive research in Reconstructionist publications, Building God’s Kingdom offers the most complete and balanced portrait to date of this enigmatic segment of the Christian Right.
Books of Interest: Jenseits von Religion?
Steffen Führding, Jenseits von Religion?: Zur sozio-rhetorischen “Wende” in der Religionswissenschaft (Transcript 2015).
Seit mehr als 40 Jahren drehen sich viele Diskussionen in der Religionswissenschaft um eine genaue Ortsbestimmung der Disziplin in Abgrenzung zu anderen religionsbezogenen Fächern. Mit einem in Anlehnung an den nordamerikanischen Religionswissenschaftler Russell T. McCutcheon »sozio-rhetorisch« genannten Ansatz stellt Steffen Führding eine aktuell kontrovers diskutierte Position in dieser internationalen Debatte vor. Er verortet den Ansatz kontrastierend in der nordamerikanischen und europäischen Disziplingeschichte, wendet ihn exemplarisch an und zeigt Perspektiven auf, wie damit theorie- und methodikbezogene Herausforderungen in der Religionswissenschaft produktiv angegangen werden können.
Announcement: Position at Georgia Southern University
The Department of Literature and Philosophy in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences invites nominations and applications for the position of Department Chair at the rank of Associate or Full Professor.
Reporting to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, the position of Department Chair requires vision, leadership, administrative talents, teaching (two courses per year), research, and service, as well as a terminal degree. The Chair will work in a collaborative department administrative structure, representing 24 full-time faculty members. The position is a tenured or tenure-track, 12-month appointment, and the salary is competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience.
Books of Interest: Writing Religion
Steven W. Ramey (ed.), Writing Religion: The Case for the Critical Study of Religion (University of Alabama Press 2015).
In 2002, the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies established the annual Aronov Lecture Series to showcase the works of nationally recognized scholars of religion capable of reflecting on issues of wide relevance to scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. Writing Religion: The Case for the Critical Study of Religions is an edited collection of essays that highlights critical contributions from the first ten Aronov lecturers.
Section one of the volume, “Writing Discourses,” features essays by Jonathan Z. Smith, Bruce Lincoln, and Ann Pellegrini that illustrate how critical study enables the analysis of discourses in society and history. Section two, “Riting Social Formations,” includes pieces by Arjun Appadurai, Judith Plaskow, and Nathan Katz that reference both the power of rites to construct society and the act of riting as a form of disciplining that both prescribes and proscribes. The writings of Tomoko Masuzawa, Amy-Jill Levine, Aaron W. Hughes, and Martin S. Jaffee appear in section three, “Righting the Discipline.” They emphasize the correction of movements within the academic study of religion.
Steven W. Ramey frames the collection with a thoughtful introduction that explores the genesis, development, and diversity of critical analysis in the study of religion. An afterword by Russell McCutcheon reflects on the critical study of religion at the University of Alabama and rounds out this superb collection.
The mission of the Department of Religious Studies is to “avoid every tendency toward confusing the study of religion with the practice of religion.” Instruction about—rather than in—religion is foundational to the department’s larger goal of producing knowledge of the world and its many practices and systems of beliefs. Infused with this spirit, these fascinating essays, which read like good conversations with learned friends, offer significant examples of each scholar’s work. Writing Religion will be of value to graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and scholars interested in the study of religion from a critical perspective.
Books of Interest: New Religiosity in Contemporary Sweden
Liselotte Frisk and Peter Åkerbäck, New Religiosity in Contemporary Sweden: The Dalarna Study in National and International Context (Equinox 2015).
The contemporary popular or new religious landscape in Sweden — arenas with religious elements outside the established churches — is large and multifaceted. Religion is today expressed in different localities, like retreat centers, health centers and gyms, and can manifest as for example healing, mindfulness, seances, coaching and body therapies. The boundaries between religious and secular arenas are becoming increasingly blurred. The popular or new religiosity is firmly rooted in older traditions, but also expresses creative innovation as a result of globalization, secularism, individualism and the impact of psychological and therapeutic orientations.
The book is based on a local study of contemporary popular or new religiosity in the area of Dalarna, Sweden. Religious expression always reflects its time. One of the book’s purposes is to explore how religion is perceived in our time and how Christianity has shaped our view of what belongs to the “religion” and what is seen as “superstition”. To understand religion it is necessary to study its practical everyday expressions.
Books of Interest: Fabricating Origins
Russell T. McCutcheon (editor), Fabricating Origins (Equinox 2015).
Fabricating Origins builds on a series of posts that originally appeared, in earlier forms, at the blog for Culture on the Edge. In these posts each member of the group focused on the problem of origins, examining how we repeatedly conjure up an authorized past that suits the needs of the continually changing present. Fabricating Origins presses these short studies further by inviting ten early career scholars to each work with Culture on the Edge by applying, extending, even critiquing the group, to further illustrate for readers how talk of origins in the present is so much more interesting that being preoccupied with long past origins themselves.
The volume, like all books in the Working with Culture on the Edge series, is introduced and concluded by original, theoretically challenging but engaging essays. It provides a selection of ten main articles which draw on a variety of examples to make the case, followed by original commentaries on each, all of which are pithy but substantive. Although not a textbook, and while challenging for any reader unaccustomed to making the switch from origins to the discourse on origins, Fabricating Origins is especially aimed at the early career reader. The volume therefore includes an annotated set of suggested readings on how to rethink origins as the product of contemporary and always tactically useful talk and action.
Announcement: Job Posting for Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
The Chair of Religious Studies (Prof. Dr. Robert Yelle) in the Faculty for Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Religious Studies at LMU Munich, seeks beginning with October 1, 2015: A scientific co-worker (PhD candidate—part time 65%).
Tasks:
- Research on your own PhD project and in the general field of the Chair.
- Teaching in the amount of 3.25 semester hours, as well as student advising.
- Active participation in the administration of the academic program.
- Scientific development is an intergral component of the work and will be actively supported.
For more information please see this pdf.
CFP: Religion and Journalism
Religion, a leading peer-reviewed journal in the study of religions, seeks submissions for a special issue on “Religion and Journalism.”
If religion is in the news, this is the result of journalism. Journalists put religion on the agenda. Moreover, many religious groups have their own newspapers and magazines and forms of journalism.
The editors invite the submission of academic articles addressing any aspect of this theme, including but not limited to the following: forms of religious journalism; the representation of religion by journalists; journalists as religious agents; changes and challenges in the work of covering religions; insider/outsider dynamics in religion reporting; global and national trends in religion coverage (thematic and structural); ethical challenges of reporting on religion; impact of new technologies on these issues; etc.
For more information, see the journal’s website here.
Books of Interest: Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty
Trevor Stack, Naomi R. Goldenberg, and Timothy Fitzgerald (editors), Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty (Brill, 2015).
Religious-secular distinctions have been crucial to the way in which modern governments have rationalised their governance and marked out their sovereignty – as crucial as the territorial boundaries that they have drawn around nations. The authors of this volume provide a multi-dimensional picture of how the category of religion has served the ends of modern government. They draw on perspectives from history, anthropology, moral philosophy, theology and religious studies, as well as empirical analysis of India, Japan, Mexico, the United States, Israel-Palestine, France and the United Kingdom.
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