Studying Religion in Culture

New Titles in REL: Second Virtual Book Event (Zoom)

February 8, 2021 by Jeri Wieringa

Join us for another evening of conversation, this time hosted by REL’s own Dr. K. Merinda Simmons and celebrating the recent publication of another new title in REL, Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures, by Dr. Richard Newton. Due to pandemic protocols, our book events for Spring 2021 are virtual and open to guests both on and off campus. We invite you to join us virtually, via Zoom, on February 23, 2021, at 7 p.m. (US central time). […]

Civil Religion or Christian Nationalism?

February 8, 2021 by Russell McCutcheon

How scholars use categories to name things, and thereby identify those things that deserve our critical attention, has long interested me. And among the things that have caught my attention over the years is the once prominent category “civil religion” — one made famous by the late U.S. sociologist Robert Bellah, drawing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s much earlier use of the term in his 1762 book, The Social Contract (for e.g., see book 4, chpt. 8; read Bellah’s influential 1967 essay.) […]

New Titles in REL: Upcoming Zoom Event

January 16, 2021 by Jeri Wieringa

Join us for an evening of conversation hosted by REL’s own Dr. Richard Newton to celebrate the publication of a new title in REL, Race and New Modernisms, co-authored by Dr. K. Merinda Simmons and Dr. James A. Crank (Department of English, University of Alabama) — a book that was a finalist for a 2020 PROSE book award (in the category of Literature). In past semesters we would have gathered in person at the local bookstore, Ernest & Hadley Booksellers, […]

Your Sun Bread, Yourself

January 8, 2021 by Lauren Horn Griffin

Every year my kids and I make Sun Bread to commemorate the winter solstice. I got this idea from the place where modern momming dwells: Instagram. My kids (by chance) went to a Waldorf preschool which focuses, among other things, on reinforcing the children’s identification with nature and spending the majority of time outside regardless of weather (born in Germany, Waldorf schools take seriously the German saying “there is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing”). The year is built around […]

REL Update: Spring 2021 Semester

January 6, 2021 by admin

With the Spring semester’s start just a week away it’s time for an update on how REL classes will be working in the new semester. […]

Thoughts Upon Losing My Religion (Major)

January 1, 2021 by admin

Kathryn D. Blanchard is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at Alma College, where she has taught undergraduates since 2006. I’ll start by making a long story short: the Religious Studies department at my institution has been shrinking for years, and this year the major was cut. The minor survives, for now (we got off lucky compared to French, German, and Anthropology), mostly because I—the lone faculty member—have tenure, our classes are generally full, and the college has […]

“The Cult of Cults”: Pop Culture Representations of a Minority Religious Group

December 31, 2020 by admin

Allison Isidore is a second-year M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies. On December 8, I submitted my last paper for the semester, wrapping up what has been, for many, a stressful period. Having just seen the trailer for the new HBOMAX docuseries “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults,” I wondered how the religious group was represented and decided to take a look. […]

Good Riddance 2020, But Wait . . .

December 29, 2020 by Steven Ramey

2020 has been a strange and rough year in so many ways, but, speaking as REL’s Graduate Director, our Department still has much to celebrate among our M.A. students and the program’s alums. They did not simply survive the shift to online learning and the challenge of moving to a new city in a pandemic; they have thrived in so many ways. In May, in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic, we graduated 4 M.A. students, our […]

The Relevance of Religious Studies is Not that We Study Religion

December 21, 2020 by admin

Jacob Barrett is a first year M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. From Colorado Springs, he earned his B.A. from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Philosophy & Religion and Biology. In the Spring he will present his research at the southeast regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Junior year of my undergraduate degree, I was asked by the chair of the Religious Studies department to represent the major at an event where […]

What is the Country’s Reality?

December 15, 2020 by admin

Allison Isidore is a second-year M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies. Have you seen the new HBO show “Lovecraft Country”? In the series premiere, set in 1950s America, we follow Atticus Freeman (played by Jonathan Majors), Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett), and George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance) as they travel to “Ardham,” Massachusetts, in hopes of finding Atticus’s father, Montrose Freeman (Michael K. Williams). He went missing while searching for the family’s history. The trio drives through town […]