Politics

What’s Happening Down Under? | Discourse! May 2023

Podcast
RSP discourse heads Down Under once again as 2/3 of the usual suspects—Carole Cusack & Raymond Radford—discuss religion, politics, life and death in the Australian religious sphere. Be sure to tune in!

Supreme Court to Coulter: Negotiating Religion in the Public Sphere | Discourse! April 2023

Podcast
Join Matt Sheedy, Tyler Tully, and host Candace Mixon as they discuss the ramifications of the in-progress Supreme Court case Groff vs. Dejoy, the Catholic Church’s decision to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, and a recent controversial tweet by the conservative media pundit, Ann Coulter. In threading these discussions together, they consider religion as negotiated in the public sphere and the limits of accommodations across religious boundaries.

Keep Hope Alive: Preparing for White Christian Nationalism

Podcast
Tune in this week with Raymond Radford and Bradley Onishi as they discuss white Christian nationalism, evangelicalism, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and much more!

The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: Religion without God

Podcast
Tune in for today's #RSPmonday featuring Leigh Eric Schmidt and Dan Gorman discussing religion without God and the use of Thomas Paine as a symbol of atheism.

Secular Spaces? | Discourse! September 2022

Podcast
This month's Discourse! centres on questions of the secular and the religious in the contemporary public square. What does it mean to be a secular space? How do institutions "deal with" religious ideas and identities in such a space? We talk about religious bias in universities, how religious spokespeople affect politics, and how religious freedom sometimes trumps other forms of freedom. Tune in with host Jacob Barrett and guests Richard Irvine and Jacob Noblett to learn more!

How “Woke” Is Your Textbook?: Introducing Religious Studies in the 2020s

Podcast
RSP co-founder Chris Cotter and Paul Hedges discuss the construction of introductory textbooks in the contemporary world, including issues of positionality, criticality, and decolonization.

The Critical Humanist Study of Islam

Podcast
What sort of discursive traps to we fall into when talking about 'Islam' or 'the West'? How might we reframe our discussions with a critical humanist approach? In this episode, Khurram Hussain joins Andie Alexander to discuss his recent book, The Muslim Speaks (Zed Books, 2020) explore the benefits of critically engaging these issues in a way that takes seriously the human-focused study of religion.

Religious Symbols, Secularism, and Culture Wars

Podcast
In this episode, Matt Sheedy joins RSP co-editor Andie Alexander to discuss his recent book Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility and unpack common assumptions about secularism and religion in the public sphere.

Sovereignty and Spiritual Warfare

Podcast
Join Savannah H. Finver and Dr. S. Jonathon O'Donnell as they talk demons, American politics, interdisciplinary methodologies, and the critical study of religion.

Politics, Religion, Decolonisation

Response
How will excluded, "interested" voices return to the academy through decolonization? Find out in this response to our interview with Natalie Avalos by Eleanor Tiplady Higgs.

Empty Signs in an Automatic Signalling System

Podcast
In this week's episode, Timothy Fitzgerald speaks with David G. Robertson about why the history of the category “religion” should make us reconsider many other modern categories like politics, liberal, secular. Can these interrelated terms ever escape their origins in centuries of colonial epistemé?

Secular Jewish Millennials in Israel/Palestine

Podcast
In this podcast, Chris Cotter is joined by Dr Stacey Gutkowski to discuss what it means to be a ‘secular Jewish Israeli millennial’.

Discourse #8 (June 2019)

Podcast
This month on Discourse, Breann Fallon, Carole Cusack and Ray Radford approach the Australian news from a Religious Studies perspective. We cover the appeal of Cardinal George Pell, the drama around Israel Folau, and the impact of Christianity on the recent Australian federal election results.

Discourse, Australia Edition

Podcast
Breann Fallon, Carole Cusack and Ray Radford approach the Australian news from a Religious Studies perspective. We cover the appeal of Cardinal George Pell, the drama around Israel Folau, and the impact of Christianity on the recent Australian federal election results.

America’s Changing Religious Landscape

Podcast
The religious landscape of the United States is changing dramatically. Americans must consider what it means to govern a nation of religious minorities. We interview Dr. Robert P. Jones, the founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. Jones discusses findings from PRRI's national surveys on religion and public life, many of which are represented in the American Values Atlas. The data collected by PRRI reveal a number of surprising trends related to religion and its intersection with politics, voting patterns, age, race, immigration, and secularism in the United States. A few key findings highlighted in PRRI's 2016 report on America's changing religious identity and covered in this podcast: (1) white Christians now account for fewer than half of the public, (2) white evangelical Protestants are in decline, (3) non-Christian religious groups are growing, and (4) atheists and agnostics account for a minority of all religiously unaffiliated. We discuss the implications of these findings and more, and we briefly review the research methodologies utilized by PRRI.

Religion as a Tactic of Governance

Podcast
Naomi Goldenberg argues that 'religion', as a separate sphere from governance, has been projected onto the past for strategic purposes. How does viewing religions as "restive once-and-future governments" help us understand the functioning of this category in contemporary discourse?

Religion, Education, and Politics in Australia and NZ

Podcast
Following on from the delivery of her conference paper at the EASR 2018 in Bern, in this podcast, Professor Marion Maddox of Macquarie University speaks to Thomas White regarding the historical, national and regional differences in the presence of religion in Australian and New Zealand schools.

Ecospirituality, Gender and Nature

Podcast
Is, as Sherry Ortner once asked, Female to Nature as Male is to Culture? Where does this discourse come from? How does this gendering of nature intersect with contemporary forms of ecospirituality? And religion more generally? Why does it matter? And for whom? Joining Chris today to discuss these questions and more, is Dr Susannah Crockford of Ghent University.

Patrons Special: RSP Discourse #1 (September 2018)

Podcast
Welcome to "Discourse", where our editors and guests take a critical look at how the category "religion" is being used in the media, the public sphere, and the academic field. This episode, David and Chris are joined by RSP Associate Editor Breann Fallon from Sydney, Australia, to discuss new Aussy Prime Minister ScoMo's Pentacostalism, an Abductee Democratic candidate in Miami, Scottish Nationalism as "religion-like", and more.

Myth, Solidarity, and Post-Liberalism

Podcast
With the rise of reactionary politics across the globe, it is arguably increasingly important for the academic community to give consideration to the prospects of developing and strengthening solidarity across apparent religious, political and economic differences. In this podcast, Chris speaks to Dr Timothy Stacey (University of Ottawa) about his forthcoming book, Myth and Solidarity in the Modern World:

The Political Relevance of the Sociology of Religion

Podcast
Following the lead of scholars such as Jose Casanova, Professor Turner brings the public and political role of religion into focus. By doing so, he argues, we can push the sociology of religion toward the realms of political theory, international relations, and race relations, thus creating an agenda in which the sociology of religion becomes increasingly mainstream and relevant to the world we live in, ...

Politics of this world: Protestant, evangelical, and Pentecostal movements in Peru

Podcast
Evangelicalism in Peru has become a driving force in politics and decision making across major subjects, such as gender-related policies and institutional power. In this podcast, professor Juan Fonseca aims to elaborate a brief history of Protestantism, in order to comprehend its current mainstream manifestation.

South American church-state relations

Podcast
Politics and social institutions are inseparable. Whether we take a look at small-scale or complex societies, we can find that politics is involved with economics, kinship with hierarchy, and of course, religion with the state. In this podcast, Sidney Castillo interviews professor Marco Huaco Palomino as he addresses the nuances of secularity in several Latin American countries.

Researching Radicalisation

Podcast
We discuss what we mean by 'radicalisation', and what its connections to socialisation, terrorism, and 'religion' might be. We take on the methodological question of how one might go about researching such a contested topic, and look specifically at some of Matthew's findings relating to the causes of radicalisation, and the neo-Durkheimian 'sacred'.

Difference or Diversity: Promoting Dialogue of Diversity as Religious Studies Professionals

Response
Prof. Martin Stringer, now of Swansea University, once again lends his expertise in religious diversity to the Religious Studies Project. In this podcast, Prof. Stringer discusses the changes the discourse of religious diversity. After years of studying in different locations in the U.K. – Birmingham, London, Manchester – Stringer began noticing a pattern in the way people identify.

Researching Religious Diversity

Podcast
In this interview, we discuss the broad topic of diversity, contrast this with concepts of 'difference', and ask what on Steven Vertovec might mean by the concept of 'super-diversity' (2007). We then ask why scholars might be interested in situations of 'religious diversity',...

Report: 2015 Joint Conferences of the New Zealand and Australian Associations for the Study of Religion

Response
The biennial conference of the New Zealand Association for the Study of Religions (NZASR) and the annual conference of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions (AASR) were held together in Queenstown, New Zealand from December 8-10 2015. Interdisciplinary perspectives and theoretical approaches across the humanities and social sciences were evident in the wide-range of papers presented. Islam, and Asian religions more generally, were the most consistent objects of focus, perhaps unsurprising given Australasia’s proximity to Asia and recent increased media attention to the Islamic State.

Teaching and Learning in Contemporary Religious Studies

Podcast
Today we are joined by Dr Dominic Corrywright of Oxford Brookes University in the UK, to discuss current developments in higher education pedagogy, the challenges and opportunities that these present for Religious Studies, and some practical examples from Dominic’s own experience.

NAASR 2015 Annual Meeting: A Report from the Field

Response
The North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR) held its annual meeting last week in connection with the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) conference in Atlanta, GA. Conference report for The Religious Studies Project by Matt Sheedy.The theme for this year’s NAASR panels was “,” which aimed to signal a basic problem in the study of religions;

Religious Demography in the US

Podcast
In this week's podcast we focus on religious demography and identification, survey tools used for religious demography in America, differences between religious identities and identifications, Americans’ shifting religious identifications, correlations between religion and social positions such as ethnicity or generational cohort, and correlations with various social and political issues.

“The Last Word…?” A Response to Bruce Lincoln’s interview on “The Critical Study of Religion”

Response
Can one really engage in a “serious conversation” in which one always has “the last word”? Or is that perhaps a “misrecognized monologue,” to use Lincoln’s terms? And what are the potential political implications of the assertion that scholars “have the last word”?

Is Britain still a Christian country?

Podcast
In what sense can a country be “Christian”? Today on the Religious Studies Project, we welcome back Professor Linda Woodhead to discuss and interrogate the question "Is Britain Still a Christian Country?", the topic of her recent Croall Lectures at the University of Edinburgh.

Religion and Authority in Asia

Podcast
Given its contextual and perspectival malleability, the notion of ‘authority', and even more so of ‘religious authority’, is challenging to define and to study. In today’s interview with Paulina Kolata, Dr Erica Baffelli discusses the notion of authority and charismatic leadership in the context of her research on New and ‘New’ New religions in contemporary Japan.

Pilgrimage in Japan and Beyond: Part 2

Podcast
Professor Ian Reader discusses his publication ‘Pilgrimage in the Marketplace’, which explores the very ‘worldly’ conditions of development, popularisation, and ultimately, survival of pilgrimage centres in connection to the dynamics of the marketplace through which the ‘sacred’ as a category can be sustained.

Pilgrimage in Japan and Beyond: Part 1

Podcast
Professor Ian Reader discusses his publication ‘Pilgrimage in the Marketplace’, which explores the very ‘worldly’ conditions of development, popularisation, and ultimately, survival of pilgrimage centres in connection to the dynamics of the marketplace through which the ‘sacred’ as a category can be sustained.

The Postsecular

Podcast
Discussion focuses upon the history of the 'postsecular', potential definitions, disciplinary and geographical differences, and ultimately suggests that ‘postsecularity’ is effectively dressing up ‘secularity’ in obfuscating clothing.In his 2011 Presidential Address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Milwaukee,

The First Rule of Adjuncting is…

Response
The first rule of adjuncting is you don’t talk about adjuncting.[1] The second rule of adjuncting is… you don’t talk about adjuncting! If you have seen the film Fight Club, a visually stunning piece based on Chuck Palhnuik’s book by the same title which savagely critiques modern consumerism, you know that I am making a link here between this film and the role of the adjunct in American higher education.

Habermas and the Problem with the ‘Problem’ of Religion in Public Discourse

Response
The starting assumption is that religious people will be fundamentally unable to speak to those who don’t share their faith. But why start with the assumption that translation will be a problem? Living in a country where you don’t know the language means you have a great excuse for not talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses. To be completely honest, I actually did understand the two Witnesses when they came to my door.

‘Religion’ as ‘sui generis’

Podcast
In this interview with Thomas Coleman, McCutcheon discusses what he terms as the “socio-political strategy” behind the label of “sui generis” as it is applied to religion. The interview begins by exploring some of the terms used to support sui generis claims to religion (e.g. un-mediated, irreducible etc.)...

Religion, Neoliberalism and Consumer Culture

Podcast
According to Gauthier, it is important to note is that religious activity of the day is not haphazard or random pick-and-choose at all. Instead, it is following a new kind of logic, that of consumerism. Marketization and commodification among other phenomena are affecting the field of religion - and vice versa. Listen and find out more!

So What Is Religion Anyway? Power, Belief, the Vestigial State

Response
Prof. Goldenberg’s interview raises as many questions as it answers, in a good way. It seems to square the circle. She puts the topic of “religion” into context by making it disappear — or, to put it less cryptically, she insists that the codes by which we understand religion to be defined, and perhaps “made official”, are in fact no different from any other codes of law.
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