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 Discordian book Principia Discordia."She is also the author of the Religious Studies Project Feature, Finding religiosity within a parody.

 

Contributions by Essi Mäkelä

podcast

Discourse #3: Essi Mäkelä and Benjamin Marcus

READ MORE


 

response

Now We Know Religion is Not Disappearing

Various new religious movements seek to establish a presence in politics through challenging the hegemony of traditional churches in a very peculiar way. Postsecular, like postmodern, is a title applied to phenomena in society that do not seem fit into an earlier paradigm and has thus been named post-something because it perhaps is not yet visible what comes next. It is an end of an era but also a shift towards another and has the academic world digging out all the blind spots of the earlier theories,...

READ MORE


 

podcast

"Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge": A Roundtable Discussion

It's time for another RSP roundtable, folks. Thanks very much to Liam for facilitating this, and to Angus, Essi, George and Hanna for joining him for a stimulating discussion. This year scholars from across the globe gathered in the city of Groningen in the north-west of the Netherlands...

READ MORE


 

response

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'...

READ MORE


 

response

Finding religiosity within a parody

A parody of religion will include elements that are accepted as religious within the society. This makes sure the parody is recognized as being targeted towards religion. Hence, a parody of religion will tell us what is accepted as a legitimate part of religion in the society where a parody or a joke on religion would be at home. Intuitively this includes nonreligious, ...

READ MORE