As a scholar in religious studies, my interest was piqued when a recent “The Daily” episode from the New York Times discussed community formation in Birds Aren’t Real, a movement / conspiracy theory that claims the government has replaced birds with drones to conduct widespread surveillance. The analysis of people who connect with others through Birds Aren’t Real had similarities to the ways that we discuss religions. Of course, connecting conspiracy theories and religion is not unique to me, […]
Tag: Belief
“People imagine and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen”
I remarked over on Twitter the other day that there’s a curious correspondence between two shows that are now streaming online. For both “Happy” and “American Gods” are about non-obvious beings who exist solely because people believe in them — cease believing in them, whether a child’s imaginary friend or a god, and they are no more. While the former is about a fallen police detective who discovers he not only has a daughter who has been kidnapped but that […]
A Social Redescription of Belief
The statement “I believe in…” is sensible only when there are others who do not; it is an agonistic affirmation…. Thus a statement of belief is a convention appropriate to a specific situation, sanctioned by a history and a community. As Wittgenstein notes, “the expression of belief … is just a sentence; — and the sentence has sense only as a member of a system of language; as one expression in a calculus. –Donald Lopez, “Belief” in Critical Terms for […]
Note from the Field: A Comment
In his comment on the recent JAAR cover, Jack Llewellyn made reference to the caption (pictured above) that appears on the inside table of contents, in the current issue, which describes the photo in question. I admit that I had not paid attention to any of this until I read his comment. And so what then caught my attention in that caption was the manner in which the seemingly descriptive voice can be far from merely descriptive. […]
Generating Pain
A Pearson textbook Nursing: A Context Based Approach to Learning (reportedly published in 2014) has become a point of controversy after an outpouring of outrage over the culturally stereotyped discussion of “Cultural Differences in Response to Pain.” The publisher has apologized, is studying how this chart passed editorial review, and has “removed the material in question from current versions of the book.” Noting how essentialized descriptions in a 2014 textbook only comes to attention now makes one wonder how many people, […]
The Problem of Belief
Were you following the three seasons of The Leftovers? If not, then I’ll not spoil the ending (too much), which aired a week ago. […]
It May Be Simpler Than You Think
I saw the above tweet yesterday, which prompted me to mull over why we generally think that the role of religion is such a complicated thing to study. It occurred to me that it is complicated (i) if you fail to recognize that there’s been trained scholars of religion out there for well over 100 years who have lots to say on these matters but also (ii) if we buy local accounts of it being some ethereal thing that mysteriously […]
A Strategic Political Tool
Did you watch the town hall meeting the other night, the second of this season’s Presidential debates? Because scholars of religion are trained in the study of how rhetorics of privacy are used by social actors, I think we might have more to say about what’s going on than we at first realize. […]
They Were Right to Boo
Did you see Ted Cruz’s speech last night at the Republican National Convention? Maybe you heard about this morning — if you’re following the US Presidential race, that is. He had a prime spot and ended his speech with a few words that caused him to get resoundingly booed. […]
Agency, Structure, and the Myth of the Immaculate Perception
National Public Radio on the weekend played a story (an interview with Neal Gabler, the author of an Atlantic article on the same topic) about how hard many in the US have it economically. […]
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