In our final Discourse! episode of the season, Andie Alexander, Craig Martin, and Paul-François Tremlett team up to discuss the concept of “harm” and religion as it pertains to recent legislation in Texas, the role of religion in politics in Scotland’s recent election for First Minister, and questions of AI, religion, and desire. It’s quite the conversation, so be sure to tune in! Related Articles “ Bill to Force Texas Public Schools to Display Ten Commandments Fails ” NYT “ Texas lawmakers appr...
Jul 04, 2023•50 min
In today’s episode, Daniel Jones talks with Travis Warren Cooper about Cooper’s recent book, The Digital Evangelicals: Contesting Authority and Authenticity After the New Media Turn (Indiana University Press, 2022) and they discuss how issues of authenticity, authority, and power are deeply intertwined with US “evangelicalism” and its mediatization. Be sure to tune in!
Jun 12, 2023•40 min
In this episode, Charles McCrary joins Matt Sheedy to discuss the role of sincerity in shaping American conceptions of religion that he explores in his recent book Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Tracing a cultural history of “sincerely held religious beliefs,” from 19th century court cases on fortune telling and the policing of morality in New York, to conscientious objectors in the 1940s and 1960s, McCrary helps us understand how the U...
Jun 05, 2023•43 min
For our May episode, Discourse! heads Down Under once again as ⅔ of our usual suspects—Carole Cusack & Raymond Radford—explore religion, politics, life and death in the Australian religious sphere. They cover a variety of recent issues from the banning of hate symbols and the rise of right groups in the wake of the pandemic, to Australian sovereign citizens and gun deaths, to the deaths of high profile priests and the different (and indifferent) reactions from both politics and media. Be sur...
May 29, 2023•45 min
In this week’s episode Sam Gill joins RSP editor Andie Alexander to discuss his recent book The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith . They consider different methodological and theoretical questions in the academic study of religion, such as comparison, difference-making, play & movement, experience, and “storytracking”—a narrative technique and method for critical self-reflection and scholarly analysis. Gill outlines a playful and proper study of religion that builds on ...
May 15, 2023•53 min
In this episode, religious studies scholars Matt Sheedy and Tyler Tully, along with host Candace Mixon, 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. In G...
May 01, 2023•48 min
In this week’s episode, Raymond Radford is joined by Bradley Onishi to discuss his new book Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next (2023). In 2021, as the Capitol building was being overrun in an attempt to stop a transfer of power, many of us were glued to our screens. Some such as Bradley Onishi were not only glued to their screen but counting the symbols and motifs he saw amongst the crowd. Onishi recognised the symbols as various religious...
Apr 17, 2023•36 min
This month’s Discourse is hosted by Suzanne Newcombe, who’s joined by Michael Munnick and Carmen Becker. They start by discussing the recent shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness Hall in Hamburg and how it has reopened discussions about discrimination. They then turn to Scotland, where discrimination is again an issue in the election of Nicola Sturgeon’s successor as Leader of the SNP. Are Kate Forbes’ opinions on equality criticised for being religious, or for not being progressive? And finally, they...
Mar 27, 2023•53 min
In this interview, Dan Gorman talks with Leigh Eric Schmidt about his 2021 book The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism . Despite its title, Schmidt’s book is not a religious biography of Thomas Paine, but rather a survey of the ways that atheists and agnostics have used Paine as a symbol or figure of devotion. Schmidt organizes his book into sections on secular relics (focusing on Paine’s exhumed, missing body), secular rituals (focusing on nineteenth-centur...
Mar 13, 2023•47 min
In this episode, Dr. Finbarr Curtis joins Jacob Noblett to discuss the growing phenomena of profanation as it concerns American politics and culture. Rather than define a holistic movement, Dr. Curtis explores the relationship between certain “forbidden” taboos and how they affect democracy in both a theoretical and very real sense. Using his book, Going Low: How Profane Politics Challenges American Democracy , as a guide, the “shock” culture of modern politics is broken down into digestible ins...
Mar 06, 2023•50 min
Join Benjamin P. Marcus, Paulina Gruffman, and Charles McCrary for this month's #RSPdiscourse as they discuss a recent Pew survey on religious literacy and the so-called Asbury revival. Be sure to tune in!
Feb 27, 2023•42 min
In today's episode, Teemu Taira and Andie Alexander discuss how social groups negotiate the category 'religion' and the relevance of the discursive methods in the study of religion.
Feb 20, 2023•40 min
Where was God during the Holocaust? There is no straightforward answer to this and there are different viewpoints across the different streams of Judaism. Join Dr. Breann Fallon as she speaks with Dr. Barbara Krawcowicz on her recent monograph exploring Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust.
Feb 13, 2023•44 min
Ting Guo chats with Rebekka King and Tenzan Eaghall about their new edited volume, Representing Religion in Film (Bloomsbury 2022), and they explore the “ideological blindspot” of existing studies on religion and film, have a listen!
Feb 06, 2023•29 min
This month's Discourse! features our co-founder Chris Cotter, Lauren Horn Griffin, and Kristi Boone complicating and unpacking oversimplified binaries—be sure to tune in!
Jan 30, 2023•31 min
In this episode host Candace Mixon and guest Schirin Amir-Moazami discuss Amir-Moazami’s book, _Interrogating Muslims: The Liberal-Secular Matrix of Integration_ as a starting point in discussing topics such state categorizations of religion in the liberal state and considerations of religion and secularism. Through examples of German swimming classes and citizenship tests, Amir-Moazami suggests that in relational moments, there are places to look for state reinforcement of its own bodily needs ...
Jan 23, 2023•40 min
Join host Sidney Castillo and guests Jordan Loewen-Colón and Sharday Mosurinjohn for the bumper final Discourse! episode of 2022!
Dec 19, 2022•1 hr 1 min
This month's Discourse! welcomes back Founding Editor Chris Cotter to the host's chair, along with guests Ting Guo and Carmen Celestini. They first discuss Queen Elizabeth II and “mourning” in Hong Kong, and then more broadly. This segues neatly into a conversation about the Filipino conspiracist who has dubbed herself the “Queen of Canada”. They talk about the Iranian protests, and "compulsory hijabs". Finally, they have a wee rant about how religion and spirituality is presented in mental heal...
Oct 31, 2022•37 min
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!
Oct 13, 2022•40 min
Join Carmen Becker and Andie Alexander for the RSP's 400th episode where they discuss the new international MA program at Leibniz University, Hannover.
Sep 16, 2022•32 min
In this week's episode, we reflect on the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 report. Gordon Lynch, the chair of the TRS panel, joins David Robertson to outline the process and tell us what it says about the situation for the discipline, and the social sciences and Arts and Humanities more broadly.
Sep 05, 2022•39 min
Our first #RSPdiscourse episode for the season features host Emily D. Crews, who is joined by long-time friends of the RSP, Richard Newton and Theo Wildcroft. This excellent and wide-ranging episode addresses present issues of history and identity, social activism and new religious movements, doulas and abortion rights, and much, much more! You won't want to miss it. Be sure to tune in and check out the video episode!
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 2 min
For our first episode of Season 12, Falguni A. Sheth joins RSP editor Andie Alexander to discuss issues of liberalism, racial discrimination, religious freedom, and governance with regard to Muslim women of color and Black Muslim women in the US.
Aug 29, 2022•42 min
Join Ben Marcus, Lauren Horn Griffin, and Jade Hui as they discuss issues of religious freedom, tradition, and authority in topics ranging from Justice Alito's leaked draft decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization to public ritual and performance art in Hong Kong. Tune in to learn more!
Jun 27, 2022•44 min
Tune in for our new Discourse! episode with Carmen Becker, Susannah Crockford, and Savannah Finver as they discuss legal issues of rights, abortion, protests, and more!
May 30, 2022•2 hr 1 min
Tune in for Part I of our RSP Remix episodes on Cults and New Religious Movements!
May 20, 2022•11 min
What is curanderismo and where is it practiced? How does it connect to the borderlands? Is it a "folk" religion, and what exactly does that mean? Tune in with Andie Alexander, Israel L. Domínguez, Brett Hendrickson, and Jennifer Koshatka Seman for the RSP's first episode on curanderismo!
May 02, 2022•51 min
In this month’s discourse, Sidney Castillo is joined by Chris Cotter and Sierra Lawson to discuss the contemporary localized manifestations of Easter and Passover celebrations, a current US Supreme Court Case relating to the First Amendment, and the entanglement of Catholicism and national identity in television’s “Derry Girls”.
Apr 25, 2022•46 min
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm and Dan Gorman discuss Storm's thoughts about the future of critical theory from his recent book Metamodernism.
Apr 18, 2022•56 min
What happens when we reframing spiritual practices as an "experiment with power"? This week, J. Brent Crosson joins Ray Kim to discuss how we can challenge conventional understandings of religion and law in modern nation-states. Be sure to tune in!
Apr 11, 2022•44 min
