Authority Online: Construction and Implications
“Buddhist religious authority online is an area which needs further exploration, so that we can truly understand how the internet is providing an opportunity for new forms of religious authority and leadership to develop, while at the same time establishing traditional religious authority. It will also help us to answer questions, such as who has the “true legitimate voice for a particular religious tradition or community” (Campbell 2012, p.76).”
Pavol Kosnac
Pavol Kosnac completed his B.A. and M.A. in Religious Studies at Comenius University in Bratislava, and studies of political philosophy, jurisprudence and ethics at Collegium of Anton Neuwirth. He is currently studying for a MSt. In the Study of Religion at Oxford University and applying for DPhil studies. His focus is mainly on the study […]
Nicholas Campion
Nicholas Campion is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Anthropology, and Director of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture. His research interests include the nature of belief, the history and contemporary culture of astrology and astronomy, magic, pagan and New Age beliefs and practices, millenarian and apocalyptic ideas, and the sociology of new religious movements. […]
Knut Melævr
Knut is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen(Norway). He is currently researching ‘spirituality’ as a folk-category and cultural domain in Norway 1930–2010. His background and particular interests are in theories of religion, new religious movements, Ainu- and Japanese religion as well as methodologies in religious studies. […]
James R. Lewis
James R. Lewis is a associate professor of religious studies at the University of Tromsø. Among Lewis’ latest titles are the monographs Children of Jesus and Mary: The Order of Christ Sophia (2009) and the forthcoming Embracing the Darkness: Modern Satanism(with Asbjørn Dyrendal & Jesper A. Petersen) andRoutledge Introduction to New Religious Movements. Among his edited collections are Violence and New Religious […]
Doe Daughtrey
Doe Daughtrey is currently based at Arizona State University. Her field is religion in the Americas, with an emphasis on the gendered experience of religion, new religious movements, and religion and popular culture. More specifically, the intersection of Mormonism and the New Spirituality in North America, how women with backgrounds in Mormonism supplement, combine, or replace […]
Lisbeth Mikaelsson
Lisbeth Mikaelsson is professor of religion in the department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. More recently she has shifted her specialism from religion and gender to new religious movements and is currently studying the Prosperity Movement. She has published a number of books and articles in Norwegian. In […]
Eileen Barker
Eileen Barker OBE, FBA, is Emeritus Professor of Sociology with special reference to the study of Religion at the London School of Economics. She has been researching minority religions and the responses to which they give rise since the early 1970s. Her study of conversion to the Unification Church for her PhD, led to an interest in a wide […]
George Chryssides
George is a long-term friend of the Religious Studies Project and is Honorary Research Fellow at York St John University and at the University of Birmingham, having been Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton from 2001 until 2008. He has written extensively on new religious movements, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses. Recent publications include […]
Matthew Francis
Matthew’s research concentrates on non-negotiable beliefs and values. He is interested in theories of the sacred and Durkheimian explanations of the role religion plays in society. In particular he has focused on understanding the role played by non-negotiable, or sacred, beliefs and values in discourses that seek to motivate or justify violent action. His research […]
Essi Mäkelä
Essi Mäkelä, PhD Candidate University of Helsinki, is working on her thesis on registering of new and Pagan religious communities. She wrote her MA thesis (2012) on Discordianism within the theoretical framework of “Liquid Religion”. New religious movements and especially Discordianism are her special interests. She is also working on the Finnish translation of the […]
Alex Norman
Alex Norman (“the Tourism Guy”) lectures at the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, where he completed his doctorate in 2010. His central research interests revolve around the confluence of travel practices and religious practices. His book Spiritual Tourism (Continuum 2011) examines the intersection of travel and secular spiritual practice by contemporary Westerners. His […]
Carole Cusack
Carole M. Cusack (Professor in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney) trained as a medievalist and her doctorate was published as Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998). Since the late 1990s she has taught in contemporary religious trends, publishing on pilgrimage and tourism, modern Pagan religions, new religious movements, the interface between religion and politics, […]
Outtakes and Review of the Year
A very special episode of the podcast this week, to mark the beginning of our annual summer hiatus. For the past year, I (David) have kept a file where all the little amusing bits that didn’t make it into the weekly episodes got put. Sometimes, this was because of restraints of time, but more often they were simply too ‘scandalous’. I broadcast them here with that proviso.
Networked religion, blurring boundaries and shifts in the field of authority
“Central to questions of authority is the ability to define the tradition; to define how scripture should be interpreted, and to tell orthodoxy from heresy.” Central to questions of authority is the ability to define the tradition; to define how scripture should be interpreted, and to tell orthodoxy from heresy.
A freehand commentary, published by the Religious Studies Project on 12 June 2013 in response to the Religious Studies Project Interview with Heidi Campbell on Religion in a Networked Society (10 June 2013)