Alex Norman on Spiritual Tourism
What would you think if I told you I had just come back from a holiday in Aya Napa? How about Santiago de Compostella or Glastonbury? How about Mecca? When does travel become pilgrimage, and what are the spiritual factors behind our holiday choices? In this week’s interview, Alex Norman and David Robertson discuss the history and modern relevance of journeys undertaken for spiritual benefit and transformation.
Academic Publishing Roundtable
Publish, or be damned! But the world of publishing can be esoteric, especially the cloistered world of academic publishing. In this special roundtable discussion, recorded during the 2012 Australian Association for the Study of Religion annual conference, Zoe Alderton leads a group of academics with experience of all levels of academic publishing in a discussion which aims to demystify the process.
The World Religions Paradigm
What counts as ‘world religions’ and how do we engage or promote this category in the academic study of religion. Join James Cox and David G. Robertson as they unpack this category.
Mormons demographics on the other side of the big puddle
“In Europe, Mormons are new religious movement par excellence – they are new to the area, their numbers are very small, they have no social respectability, their doctrines are considered strange and exotic […], and all of these characteristics place them on the same level as other small groups that are trying to settle in the European area”
Religion in the 2011 UK Census
An ’emergency broadcast’ from the Religious Studies Project… featuring George Chryssides, Bettina Schmidt, Teemu Taira, Beth Singler, Christopher Cotter, and David Robertson. What did the 2011 census data actually say, and how did the press report it? Why does it matter, and how can we use the data more constructively?
Astrology
If statistics are to be believed, close to 100% of people in the UK know their astrological sun-sign. But what is astrology, exactly? Is it merely a “survival” from the medieval worldview, and what is its relationship to modernity and scientific thought? Most pertinently, does it have something profound to tell us about the nature of popular belief, or vernacular religion?
Book Review – Church Growth in Britain (David Goodhew, ed)
CHURCH GROWTH IN BRITAIN: 1980 TO THE PRESENT Goodhew, D. (Ed.), Ashgate Contemporary Ecclesiology Series. 2012: Ashgate, Farnham, UK. Reviewed for The Religious Studies Project (RSP) by Christopher R. Cotter. Published 30 November 2012. This review also forms part of book review podcast, recorded by the RSP, available here. In recent years, the secularization thesis has […]
Redefinition of the eclectic group-identity
“In a way, when registering themselves, non-institutional religious groups take a step toward being more institutional and possibly even hierarchical – even if there is not much of hierarchy within the group to begin with.”
In the podcast Suzanne Owen refers to the Druidry’s manifold self-identification situation. It seems to me this is a wide-spread phenomenon where there are conflicting ideas about how ‘religion’…
Knut Melvær
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 […]
Wouter Hanegraaff on Western Esotericism
In this interview, Professor Wouter Hanegraaff tells us about what he dubs “the biggest blank spaces of neglected territories in the study of religion”, namely Western esotericism. He tells how he first came over the German Folklorist Will-Erich Peuckert’s book Pansophie (1936) and discovered a group of renaissance thinkers he had never heard of, …
Ends and Beginnings: A Reflection on the 2012 EASR Conference
“If I had to choose I would say my favourite thing about these conferences was seeing young and vibrant postgraduate students presenting their craft. I was continuously impressed and excited by the high quality scholarship, ideas, and conversations presented and stimulated by my peers.”
To open the 2012 conference for the European Association for the Study of Religions (in conjunction with the International Association for the History of Religion)…
Roundtable: Building an Academic Career
During her recent trip to the UK, the Religious Studies Project managed (with the promise of copious Pink Gin) to persuade Professor Carole Cusack to take part in a roundtable discussion. She suggested that we discuss how to build an academic career – advice which she has been generous with to many people in the past. That having been agreed, …
Vernacular Religion
Images of Jesus on a slice of toast; Koran verses in an aubergine; statues which cry blood; Angel Colour cards and Atlantean crystal therapies; popular religious expressions are everywhere. In this interview, Marion Bowman showcases her fascinating research into the ways in which religion permeates everyday life, paying particular attention to the manifestations at the famous Glastonbury Festival.
Lisbeth Mikaelsson on Religion and Gender
From dress codes to notions of purity to questions of the legitimate of power the topic of gender is one few scholars can afford to ignore. With a whole range of issues to be investigated Lisbeth Mikaelsson gives us an introductory insight into the complex topic of religion and gender: the issues it raises, the way we go about it, who’s doing it and why.
Weekly Opportunities Digest (March 23 2012) – Journals, Papers, Jobs, Fellowships and more…
We have moved opportunities digests until Fridays, largely to promote more discussion related to the reponse essays and podcasts, and also to give readers the chance to think about the opportunities over the weekend. We have linked each heading below to the appropriate section so you can (hopefully) jump to whatever you are interested in. We are not responsible for any content contained herein, but have simply copied and pasted from a variety of sources.