Data Check

It's that time of year again where the RSP continues to combat the Christian-hegemony by bringing you an as-yet-undefined festive special! Hosted by Jonathan Tuckett and supported by (the invisible) Sammy Bishop, this year we play The Deadline, a quiz in which four aspiring academics must avoid their supervisor, quiz-master and champion of champions Carole Cusack, by answering some fiendishly difficult questions. If at any point though, Carole gets more answers correct than they do they will be eliminated from the game (and possibly asked to leave academia).

If this gets you in the festive mood, you might want to check out our back catalogue of festive specials:

• 2012 – Only 60 Seconds!
• 2013 – Nul Point!
• 2014 – Masterbrain!
• 2015 – Fourteen to One!
• 2016 – The Unverifiable Truth-Claim!
• 2017 – Scrape My Barrel!

Here at the RSP we are ever conscious of the perils of creating or reinforcing hard-and-fast distinctions between groups. However, it is arguably fair to see that, in contrast to previous generations, young people born after 1990 have always lived in social and cultural environments constituted by conspicuous consumerism, digital media and the proliferation of global social movements. Despite a number of detailed, contextual studies that have emerged in recent years concerning the complex interactions between young people and the religion-related field – indeed, we would strongly recommend listeners check out our podcast with Naomi Thompson on “Religion, Youth and Intergenerationality” – large-scale, international, and usefully comparable research has been lacking. Today, Chris is joined by Marcus Moberg and Sofia Sjö to discuss the fascinating “Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective” project, which has been addressing this dearth on a massive scale. In this interview, we discuss the logistics and some of the emerging findings of a project which has involved utilizing a number of innovative research methods – including the Faith Q-Sort – conducted simultaneously in different locations across the globe, including China, Finland, India, Israel, Japan, Ghana, Peru, Poland, Russia, Sweden, USA and Turkey.

This interview was recorded at the European Association for the Study of Religions’ 2018 conference on Multiple Religious Identities in Bern, Switzerland.

In this interview recorded at the BASR/ISASR, Naomi Goldenberg considers how 'religion' has developed as a separate sphere from 'governance'. She argues that 'religion' has been projected onto the past for strategic purposes, as a management technique, or even alternative to violence. How does viewing religions as "restive once-and-future governments" help us understand the functioning of this category in contemporary discourse?

She takes us through several examples, including Judaism, new religions, Islam and contemporary debates on abortion and circumcision. As well as a clear example of the functioning of the category 'religion' in the contemporary world, this gives some real-world applications of critical theory that shows its relevance beyond the academy.

Estonia, the northernmost of the Baltic states, has a reputation of being one of the most secularized countries in Europe. Although the visibility of religion is rising, being ‘not religious’ is still considered normative. Estonia is a context in which notions and debates on religion, atheism, and indifference are interrelated in complex ways with the history of Estonian nationalism, and two foreign religious-secular regimes: German Lutheran and Soviet Atheism. In this interview, Chris and Atko Remmel discuss why the Estonian context is – or should be – interesting to scholars of ‘religion’. What happened during the Soviet era? What about the academic study of religion in Estonia? How did the strong connection between Estonian national identity and ‘atheism’ develop? How does this play out in the contemporary context?

This interview was recorded at the European Association for the Study of Religions’ 2018 conference on Multiple Religious Identities in Bern, Switzerland, and concludes by looking ahead to the 2019 EASR conference in Tartu, Estonia.

In this podcast, Ross Downing discusses personal and communal narratives, online mythology and the grey areas between religion and media with Vivian Asimos. Miss Asimos' work has investigated the potentiality of video games as contemporary mythology in popular culture. In the broader context of BASR 2018, the overall theme of boundaries and categories is explored and the possible insights online movements can yield in the perception and application of theories of religion.

In this podcast, Carmen Celestini speaks with Dr. Douglas Cowan on his newest book exploring the religious imagination of Stephen King through his horror novels. Cowan is well known for his research in the area of religion and pop culture through analysis of films and literature. The discussion focuses not only on Stephen King but the process of deciphering the religious motifs within King's work, and the importance of this work to religious studies.

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.

In his work Auf De Hohe, Jewish poet and author Berthold Auerbach famously wrote "music is a universal language, and needs not be translated. With it soul speaks to soul." (1865). Music plays a numerous roles in many religious traditions, Judaism being no exception. From piyyutim to zemirot to Yeshiva acapella groups in the United States, the use of music in the Jewish faith is numerous and varied. In this interview, Breann Fallon of the Sydney Jewish Museum chats to Dr Ruth Illman of Åbo Akademi University and Uppsala Universityi about her research on the role of music as an agent of change within the progressive Jewish community in London that appears in her most recent monograph Music and Religious Change among Progressive Jews in London: Being Liberal and Doing Traditional. In particular, Dr Illman discusses the power of music to fuse the traditional and the liberal in a forward movement of progressive Judaism. Additionally, the connection of this movement to particular locations and other potential issues such as gender provide a stimulating discussion around this innovative display of both religion and creativity.

On this month's episode of Discourse, Dr. Irene Oh (Director of the Peace Studies Program, George Washington University) and Dr. Carolyn Davis (independent consultant) spoke with Ben Marcus about a few key stories in religion and public life from February.

In Dunn v. Ray, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the execution of Dominique Ray could move forward and denied Ray's request to have an imam at his side in the execution chamber (though a Christian chaplain could be present). This case prompted an outcry by many religious freedom advocates in the U.S. and generated a debate about the unequal application of religious freedom protections and accommodations.

In South Carolina, the Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services granted Miracle Hill Ministries, a foster care agency, a waiver to receive federal funding despite its commitment to only place children with Protestant foster parents. We discuss how this case ties in with broader questions of judicial empathy and how we care for children in the United States.
Ellen Page made headlines when she asked Chris Pratt to explain his membership in Zoe Church, an evangelical church in Los Angeles accused of promoting anti-LGBT teachings. We discuss individual versus communal religious identity and the responsibility individuals have for their communities' doctrine.

Ilhan Omar was accused of anti-Semitism by politicians on the right and left for her criticism of AIPAC's lobbying efforts. We discuss what we should make of the debate about differentiating between anti-Semitic tropes and critiques of Israel.

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By comparing the Miss Christian America pageant to other more well known pageants Miss USA and Miss America, Chelsea Belanger's study provides a look at the intersections between religion, gender, and collective identity. Using Christian Smith's ideas of subcultural identity, Belanger examines how the structure of the Miss Christian pageant helps develop a unique form of embodied religion.