Susan Bigelow Reynolds, in her response to our Season 10 episode with Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, calls attention to how Catholic devotionalism is frequently essentialized and limited in its understanding. She argues instead for a “more expansive consideration” of Catholic ritual ecology.
Responding to our Season 10 episode with Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, Kristy Nabhan-Warren furthers the discussion on inadvertent feminization of Catholic devotionalism and ways in which it can be reimagined.
In his response to our interview with Carmen Celestini, Raymond Radford builds on Celestini’s discussion of conspiracy theories as “history repeated” in his analysis of social responses to pandemics “then and now.”
In this week’s response to our interview with Robin Veldman, Dr. Emma Frances Bloomfield challenges the oversimplification of the category “evangelicals” and employment of apocalyptism in climate change discourses.
Kicking off our Season 11 Response essays, Robyn Faith Walsh builds on Willi Braun’s discussion of the emphasis on origins in New Testament studies to explore the strategic use and employment of Paul’s letters in the history of Christianity.
Sarah Griffis highlights how Morehouse demonstrates the central issue of studying diverse social groups in antiquity: “how do you get something new out of what’s already there before it? Whatever it is that’s new needs to be intelligible enough to be compelling and persuasive.”
In this response, Joel Bordeaux notes that Ellen Gough’s focus on the ritual components and “tantricization” of Jain ascetic practices offers a new way of thinking through and contextualizing the “notoriously slippery notion of Tantra” in the subcontinent.
Raymond Haberski, Jr. writes that our interview with Ronit Stahl about Military chaplaincy “provides a nuanced picture of pluralism” in the United States. This reveals how massive institutions like the U.S. military operationalize pluralism to “both incorporate difference and flatten distinctions.”
“The story that Dr. Gough is telling about the development of Jain tantra—the Jain adoption of mantra-practice, but rejection of antinomianism—thus seems to me to be a fundamentally noteworthy case-study,” writes Anne Mocko on our interview with Ellen Gough discussing the ‘tantricization’ of Jain ascetic rituals.
Jessica Cooperman writes that Stahl’s work demonstrates how racism shapes religious institutions and argues that “it points to the necessity of re-examining American narratives of religious freedom through the analytical lenses of both race and gender.”
“The processes by which the Aliites imagine their history reveal much about how state sanctioned ideas and institutions gain and maintain seeming natural validity,” writes Chernoh Sesay, Jr., in response to our interview with Spencer Dew on the Aliites.
“Climate change demands intellectual adaptation by scholars of all disciplines, religious studies included,” writes Evan Berry in response to our interview with Robin Veldman on evangelical opposition to climate action.
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