Have you heard of the case of the church sign that local government in Arizona is trying to regulate? It’s going before the US Supreme Court today… […]
Tag: Classification
“Well I Guess the Biggest Question Would Be Why…”
“It is the fact that we have been preoccupied for a long time with finding in this seamless web of human activities the capacity to break one out and say ‘When they’re doing that one they’re doing religion’…” Watch the video here: This interview with Prof. Smith was conducted by Prof. Alfred F. Benney, of Fairfield University, while attending the annual AAR/SBL in Boston, MA, on November 21, 1999. […]
Read More from “Well I Guess the Biggest Question Would Be Why…”
The Category Religion — Twenty Years Later
I’ve got a review essay coming out in 2015 in Numen (issue 62/1) that I just proofed. It’s on recent works concerned with the category religion. It was interesting to write, since it’s been twenty years since I wrote a similar essay on the category religion in scholarship. […]
Authenticity and the Nation-State, Or Why Thai Food is a Lot Like ISIS
We love Thai food around here. But how do you know the food on your plate is actually Thai? What makes it Thai? The sign in the restaurant window? The “Thai tea?” What is “authentic Thai food?” Well, the government of Thailand is sick and tired of your sad excuses for Thai food and they have a plan to ensure you never settle for fake Thai food again. It’s not just a plan, it’s a robot. […]
Read More from Authenticity and the Nation-State, Or Why Thai Food is a Lot Like ISIS
I Know You Are But What Am I?
By Cara Burnidge Cara Burnidge, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Northern Iowa, teaches Religions of the World and researches religion in U.S. foreign relations. She also tweets and, along with her students, curates a Flipboard magazine dedicated to religion in international affairs. Readers beware: this blog post is not about religion. It is a reflection on some of the issues involved in defining an object of study.* This past week, Rachel Maddow kicked off her show with […]
Apparently, It’s Everywhere
The curious thing about the discourse on religion is that the category purports to be a completely totalized notion, all-inclusive of everything, inasmuch as it is often used as if it names some deeply human yearning or sentiment/experience, making it synonymous with “the human condition” or maybe even “culture” itself. Thus, the category has to be applicable to everything it is that we do or produce — after all, if baseball can be religion, then what can’t? […]
On Lists
By Andie Alexander Andie Alexander earned her B.A. in Religious Studies and History in 2012. She is now working on her M.A. in Religious Studies at CU Boulder. Andie also works as the online Curator for the Culture on the Edge blog. […]
Situated Description
The other day I was at the Field Museum of Natural History, in Chicago, and noticed that on the descriptions of a number of the bird specimens there was printed the following simple message: Sexes look alike […]
Self-Help Jesus in America
By Allie Rash Allie Rash is a rising senior double majoring in Mathematics and Religious Studies. She hails from Franklin, TN, but calls North Carolina and Kansas home as well. This Spring Allie completed an independent study with Prof. Mike Altman on ideas of self-help in American Protestantism. In this post she reviews the final book they read together, Kate Bowler’s Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. This post originally appeared on Allie’s independent study blog, Self-Help Jesus. […]
The Relevance of “Church”
In our classrooms, we often discuss the challenge of defining categories like religion or the sacred. While those questions sometimes appear quite abstract, separated from the issues that intersect with daily life, the relevance of such analyses can be particularly relevant. An NPR story last night on Daystar, a “religious TV network”, focused on questions of categories and their practical implications. In short, since Daystar classifies itself as a church, a classification that the IRS accepts, the TV network does […]