While studying the impact of social media on social relations in a medium-sized Norwegian city, and the formation of local social media clusters, our team of researchers stumbled upon a group of ex- and non-religious persons, which made us re-examine issues of majority-minority relations.
Author: Evelina Lundmark
NSRN annual lecture 2018 by Samuli Schielke: Secular powers and heretic undercurrents
In this keynote held at the 2018 NSRN conference Worldviews in World View: Particularizing Secularism, Secularity and Nonreligion, Samuli Schielke discusses secularism as a form of discursive power in the Middle East.
Sacred Traditions in Secular Britain – What plans for the next coronation reveal about the relationship between religion and tradition
In this blog post, Charlotte Hobson explores British sentiments around the sacred using the Monarchy as a case study, asking: who wants a Christian coronation?
The Critical Study of Nonreligion: An Invitation
In this post, NSRN Co-Director Chris Cotter places contemporary non-religion studies into conversation with the critical study of religion, assessing two dominant approaches in the field before extolling the virtues of a discursive approach as one way in which rigorous empirical work can be conducted ostensibly under the religion/non-religion binary and contribute to the critical project.
Senses of the Secular Symposium
Co-organisers Justine Esta Ellis and Marek Sullivan report back on the day-symposium Senses of the Secular, held 21 May 2018 at Balliol College, Oxford.
Are There ‘Religion’ and ‘the Secular’ in Premodern Japan?
Scholars working on premodern Japan tend to project ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’ upon the socio-cultural context they study. My contention is that there was no ‘religion’ in premodern Japan. Therefore, there was no ‘secularity’ in premodern Japan, either.
Subtypes of Religious Nones in the United States and Canada
In this post Joel Thiessen and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme updates us on their 2 year project which aims to answer what the difference is between ‘nones’ in the US and Canada.
Spirituality: Secular or Religious?
In this post Galen Watts questions whether the paradigm of secularization—exemplified by the recent work of Steve Bruce—is ultimately the most useful for studying spirituality. He contends that scholars might be better off eschewing essentialist definitions of “religion” and instead examining the various ways in which individuals operationalize the term “spirituality,” and for what purposes. Drawing from his qualitative research with Canadian millennials who self-identify as SBNR he argues that individuals who claim “spirituality” do so largely as a result of the religious imaginaries they hold. Thus investigating the nature of these imaginaries might prove far more fruitful than obsessing over whether
or notspirituality is “real religion” or not.
Whither the Paranormal in Secular Studies?
Joseph O. Baker encourages the study of nonreligion to look beyond the study of
atheists and skeptics, and explore what he calls the doubly castoff, the supernatural.
Why we care: Searching for secular spirituality in British hospitals
Based on her work as a non-religious healthcare chaplain, Madeleine Parkes discusses the role and purpose of spirituality in healthcare.
NSRN Online 