As transnational gurus have increasingly mobilized globally in multidirectional patterns and occupy significant virtual spaces of connectivity, the ideal that religious traditions are dependent on geographical fixity has become increasingly destabilized.
Muslim students experience the Islamic Religious Education classroom as an in-between space where they can ask questions that they feel are too delicate to be discussed in religious communities or even with their parents but need to be discussed with an adult who is an insider of their tradition but also understand their everyday life at school.
The title of this response comes from an essay by the German journalist and author Hakan Tezkan. Tezkan refers to people’s experiences of racism in everyday life, shared on Twitter under the hashtag #metwo. In the days before we wrote this response, gangs of right-wing extremists roamed the streets of Chemnitz, pretending to be “claiming back their country.” What they were actually doing was chasing and terrorizing people who did not look “German” in their
However, while Warren has found a consensus on the nature of the Dark Goddess amongst the texts and YouTube communities that she is examining, not all adherents within contemporary Goddess Spirituality view the Dark Goddess in the same way. In fact, the Dark, or Shadow aspect of Goddess, is a point of heated debate within the Goddess community amongst adherents, feminist theologians, and thealogians.
I have lived in the American Southwest much of my life, and so Dr. Crockford’s description of Sedona and its inhabitants was very familiar to me (although I have never visited that particular corner of Arizona). I was somewhat startled, though, by the idea of connecting the kind of hyperemotionalized and largely disembodied approach to spirituality and the environment that she found there to gendered discourses. On a personal level, as a former inhabitant of the region, I see much closer connections between the kind of American New Age spirituality she described and the transhumanist millenarianism that pervades much of the culture of Silicon Valley.
This week, Ella Bock tells us why she thinks you should re-listen to our interview with Johannes Quack on Indian Rationalism, and a Relational Approach to Non-religion: “A great listen for better understanding the boundary between religion and non-religion, especially outside of a western context!”
According to RSP Managing Editor, Tommy Coleman, “Anyone interested in stepping out the front door of their own discipline will find this podcast, like the book, contains tools for thinking you’d better not leave home without.” During our “summer break”, various members of the RSP editorial team will be sharing their thoughts on some podcasts from the RSP archive that they think you should listen to (again).
During our “summer break”, various members of the RSP editorial team will be sharing their thoughts on some podcasts from the RSP archive that they think you should listen to (again). Editors’ Picks, if you will. These aren’t necessarily ‘favourites’, but just some podcasts that came to mind that the author has found useful for whatever reason.
In our fifth editors’ pick, Marek Sullivan writes “Few questions are as meta-reflexive as the question ‘Is secularism a world religion?’ It’s now established that secularism and religion are co-constitutive terms: the history of the category ‘religion’ is inseparable from the history of secularisation.
In the fourth of our editors’ picks, Ray Radford takes “the soppy route on this choice, as David Robertson’s interview with David Wilson on ‘Spiritualism and Shamanism’ was the very first interview/podcast I heard from the RSP way back in my days as an undergrad. This podcast (along with some amazing lecturers and tutors) helped cement that religious studies was the right choice.
In the third of our editors’ picks, David Robertson picks “the interview that I wished I had done. Reading Tim Fitzgerald’s The Ideology of Religious Studies (2000) as an undergrad was part of a seismic shift in my perspective, from an interest in religions to an interest in ‘religion’ […]. This is a dense interview that rewards another listen.”
In the second of our summer “Editors’ Picks”, Sammy Bishop flags up an important interview in which Dawn Llewellyn provides a great introduction to how feminism, religion, and the academic study of both, might (or indeed, might not) interact. Llewellyn also does an excellent job of flagging up how future work in these fields could become more productively interdisciplinary.
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