Exploring contemporary issues in the
academic study of religion through podcasts.
The Religious Studies Project is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organization (SCIO) devoted to producing engaging and accessible resources for the contemporary study of religion.
Since 2012, our weekly podcast and written response essays have featured hundreds of scholars sharing their research and expertise in religious studies.
Podcasts and Resources on the Contemporary Social-Scientific Study of Religion
In this interview, Dan Gorman talks with Leigh Eric Schmidt about his 2021 book The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism. Despite its title, Schmidt’s book is not a religious biography of Thomas Paine, but rather a survey of the ways that atheists and agnostics have used Paine as a symbol or figure of devotion.
Schmidt organizes his book into sections on secular relics (focusing on Paine’s exhumed, missing body), secular rituals (focusing on nineteenth-century Americans who sought new frameworks for life events), and secular institutions (focusing on attempts to organize various churches of humanity). An epilogue looks at secularism in the twentieth century. Several atheist and free thought congregations earned tax-exempt status as religious organizations, but religious conservatives from the Cold War onward stoked popular fears that secularists wanted to take over America. Throughout the book, Schmidt highlights a fundamental argument in the atheist/nontheist community: Does an absence of belief in God mean an absence of religion and all the things that go with it? As Schmidt’s history of Thomas Paine fans reveals, the answer is no; a religion can operate on functional lines without a belief in God.
Other topics of conversation include the effects of COVID-19 on Schmidt’s research and writing process, the design and semiotics of the book’s hardcover edition, conservative critiques of Schmidt’s support for liberal religion and secularism in public life, and the book’s connection to Schmidt’s earlier Restless Souls (2nd ed. 2012).
In this episode, Jacob Noblett talks to Dr. Finbarr Curtis about his recent book, Going Low: How Profane Politics Challenges American Democracy, to help breakdown the rejuvenation of populist political narratives and movements.
Join Benjamin P. Marcus, Paulina Gruffman, and Charles McCrary for this month’s #RSPdiscourse as they discuss a recent Pew survey on religious literacy and the so-called Asbury revival. Be sure to tune in!
In today’s episode, Teemu Taira and Andie Alexander discuss how social groups negotiate the category ‘religion’ and the relevance of the discursive methods in the study of religion.
Where was God during the Holocaust? There is no straightforward answer to this and there are different viewpoints across the different streams of Judaism. Join Dr. Breann Fallon as she speaks with Dr. Barbara Krawcowicz on her recent monograph exploring Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust.
K. Merinda Simmons nuances and furthers Jason Josephson Storm’s episode from Season 11 by reflecting critically on the ways in which postmodernism is explicitly—or even implicitly—dismissed in religious studies scholarship.
Responding to our interview with Paul Hedges, Steven Ramey builds on the discussion by arguing for the necessity of unpacking the authority associated with textbooks and shifting pedagogical approaches from presenting information to training students to think critically about the information presented.
In this response to our interview with David G. Robertson, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski builds on and furthers the discussion by exploring alternative approaches to studying gnosticism in conversation with Robertson’s analysis.
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The views expressed in podcasts, features and responses are the views of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Religious Studies Project or our sponsors. The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750).
