News

Posted on by katieaston News, Publications

Podcast: Lois Lee on Nonreligion

Lois Lee talks to the members of the Religious Studies Project team about her views on researching nonreligion, more details and the podcast can be found on the RSP website: 

“It is fast becoming a tradition in ‘nonreligion’ research to acknowledge that Colin Campbell’s seminal call in Toward a Sociology of Irreligion (1971) for a widespread sociological analysis’ of ‘nonreligion’ had until very recently been ignored (Bullivant and Lee 2012). Although there has been a steady stream of output on secularisation, and more recently on atheism, these publications rarely dealt with ‘nonreligion’ as it is ‘actually lived, expressed, or experienced […]in the here and now’ (Zuckerman 2010, viii). One scholar who has been leading the way in theorising and empirically populating this emerging field is Lois Lee, the founding director of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, who joins Chris and Ethan in this podcast, recorded in May 2012 in Edinburgh.

Posted on by Per Smith News

Conference Guides: Nonreligion at AAR 2012 (1st guide)

The NSRN is pleased to announce an additional service for scholars attending conferences not specifically focused on nonreligion, but still covering the field to some extent or another — the publication of conference guides. These guides will contain a distillation of all the sessions/panels and individual papers relating to the field of nonreligion scheduled for the upcoming conference. We will announce the publication of new guides in our news feed (like we are now) but we will also archive them on the new Conference Guides page. If you have any questions or suggestions about the conference guides please direct them to Per Smith.

Without further ado, here is the very first conference guide:

American Academy of Religion (AAR) 2012

Posted on by amhennessey News

New Events Report – 2012 NSRN Conference: ‘Non-Religion and the Secular: New Horizons for Multidisciplinary Research’

The NSRN announces the publication of a new Events Report by Simeon Wallis (University of Warwick) on the 2012 NSRN Conference: ‘Non-Religion and the Secular: New Horizons for Multidisciplinary Research’ (July 4-6, 2012).

Please see the details and link to the document below:

A Report on the 2012 NSRN Conference: ‘Non-Religion and the Secular: New Horizons for Multidisciplinary Research’
Goldsmiths, University of London, 4-6 July 2012
Report by Simeon Wallis, University of Warwick
Published by the NSRN, 22 September 2012

Posted on by katieaston News, Uncategorized

Fellowship: Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies “Belief and Unbelief”

New Topic for 2012-14: Belief and Unbelief
During the academic years 2012/13 and 2013/14, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies will focus on belief and unbelief and how they have interacted in history. How has the line been drawn between religion and other forms of deeply held conviction: secularism, secular religions, political theologies, and the like? At issue are not just questions of demarcation and definition but processes: secularization, proselytizing, conversion. How does belief manifest itself in lived experience, in ritual, observance, and daily-life practices? How have people and cultures moved across the borderline between belief and unbelief? How has belief itself become a subject of study, whether from a secular or theological point of view? As always, we hope to address these questions from a wide variety of periods and places, from prehistory to the present and from all parts of the world.

Follow up:
apply for a fellowship.
see information regarding fellowships.
request general program information.
written requests should be addressed to: The Manager, Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies,
Department of History,
129 Dickinson Hall,
Princeton University,
Princeton, NJ 08544-1017, U.S.A.

Posted on by Chris News

55 new entries in the NSRN Bibliography

55 texts, new and old, have been added to the NSRN Bibliography. Happy researching!

  • Ballestero, A. 2012. ‘The Productivity of Nonreligious Faith : Openness, Pessimism, and Water in Latin America’. In Nature, Science, and Religion : Intersections Shaping Society and the Environment, 169–190. Santa Fe; School for Advanced Research Press.
  • Berner, Ulrich. 1990. ‘Religion Und Atheismus’. In The Notion of ‘Religion’ in Comparative Research, ed. H. Bianchi, 769–776. Rome: Selected Proceedings of the XVI IAHR Congress held in Rome, September 3-8.
  • ———. 2011. ‘Der Neue Atheismus Als Gegenstand Der Religionswissenschaft’. In Religionen Nach Der Säkularisierung. Festschrift Für Johann Figl Zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. H.G. Hödl and V. Futterknecht, 378–390. Wien: Lit Verlag.
  • Berner, Ulrich, and Johannes Quack, eds. 2012. Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • Beyer, Peter. 2012. ‘2011 Association for the Sociology of Religion Presidential Address Socially Engaged Religion in a Post-Westphalian Global Context : Remodeling the Secular/Religious Distinction’. Sociology of Religion 73 (2): 109–129.
  • Brown, Callum G. 2012. ‘`The Unholy Mrs Knight’ and the BBC : Secular Humanism and the Threat to the `Christian Nation’, C.1945-60’. English Historical Review 127 (525): 345–376.
  • Bruce, Steve. 2001. ‘“Christianity in Britain”, R. I.P..’ Sociology of Religion 62 (2): 191–203.
  • Bullivant, Spencer. 2012. Atheism and Non-Religion Panel Session (2012 BSA SocRel Annual Conference). University of Chester: NSRN. http://nsrn.net/1785-2/.
  • Bullivant, Stephen. 2012. ‘Not so Indifferent After All? Self-conscious Atheism and the Secularisation Thesis’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 100–106.
  • Bussing, A., F. Reiser, A. Michalsen, and K. Baumann. 2012. ‘Engagement of Patients With Chronic Diseases in Spiritual and Secular Forms of Practice : Results with the Shortened SpREUK-P SF17 Questionnaire’. Integrative Medicine 11 (1): 28–38.
  • Choi, N.G., and D.M. DiNitto. 2012. ‘Predictors of Time Volunterring, Religious Giving, and Secular Giving: Implications for Nonprofit Organizations’. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 39 (2): 93–120.
  • Cotter, Christopher R., Rebecca Aechtner, and Johannes Quack. 2012. Non-Religiosity, Identity, and Ritual Panel Session. Hungarian Culture Foundation, Budapest, Hungary: NSRN. http://nsrn.net/1523-2/.
  • Cragun, R., S. Yeager, and D. Vega. 2012. ‘Research Report : How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the U.S’. Free Inquiry 32 (4): 39–46.
  • Davie, Grace. 2012. ‘Belief and Unbelief: Two Sides of a Coin’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 3–7.
  • Figl, J. 2012. ‘Religionswissenschaft, Religionskritik Und Atheismus Bei Friedrich Nietzsche’. In Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne, ed. Ulrich Berner and Johannes Quack, 31–52. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • Fitzgerald, Timothy, ed. 2007. Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations. London and Oakville CT: Equinox.
  • Frega, R. 2012. ‘Equal Accessibility to All : Habermas, Pragmatism, and the Place of Religious Beliefs in a Post-Secular Society’. Constellations 19 (2): 267–287.
  • Galen, L.W., and J. Kloet. 2011a. ‘Personality and Social Integration Factors Distinguishing Non-religious from Religious Groups:  The Importance of Controlling for Attendance and Demographics’. Archive for the Psychology of Religion 33: 205–228.
  • ———. 2011b. ‘Mental Well-being in the Religious and the Non-religious: Evidence for a Curvilinear Relationship’. Mental Health Religion and Culture 14: 673–689.
  • Gentz, J. 2012. ‘Religionskritik Im Wandel Der Orthodoxie. Vom Dritten Opiumkrieg Und Vom Aberglauben Im China Der 1980er Jahre’. In Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne, ed. Ulrich Berner and Johannes Quack, 53–79. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • Graham, E. 2012. ‘What’s Missing? Gender, Reason and the Post-Secular’. Political Theology (2): 233–245.
  • Gulalp, H. 2010. ‘Secularism and the European Court of Human Rights’. European Public Law 16 (3): 455–471.
  • Hoogheem, A. 2012. ‘Secular Apocalypses : Darwinian Criticism and Atwoodian Floods’. Mosaic 45 (2): 55–72.
  • Hyman, Gavin. 2012. ‘Dialectics or Politics? Atheism and the Return to Religion’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 66–74.
  • Laitila, Teuvo. 2012. ‘The Russian Orthodox Church and Atheism’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 52–57.
  • LeDrew, Stephen. 2012. ‘The Evolution of Atheism Scientific and Humanistic Approaches’. History of the Human Sciences 25 (3) (July 1): 70–87. doi:10.1177/0952695112441301.
  • Lynch, Gordon. 2012. The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Maclure, J., and C. Taylor. 2011. Secularism and Freedom of Conscience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Mahlamäki, Tiina. 2012. ‘Religion and Atheism from a Gender Perspective’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 58–65.
  • Martinson, Mattias. 2012. ‘Atheism as Culture and Condition: Nietzschean Reflections on the Contemporary Invisibility of Profound Godlessness’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 75–86.
  • McAnulla, Stuart. 2012. ‘Radical Atheism and Religious Power: New Atheist Politics’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 87–99.
  • Miner, R.C. 2012. ‘Leo Strauss’s Adherence to Nietzsche’s “Atheism From Intellectual Probity’’’. Perspectives on Political Science 41 (3): 155–164.
  • Modood, Tariq. 2012. ‘2011 Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture Is There a Crisis of Secularism in Western Europe?’ Sociology of Religion 73 (2): 130–149.
  • Niose, David. 2012. Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Ozaloglu, S., and M.O. Gurel. 2011. ‘Designing Mosques for Secular Congregations: Transformations of the Mosque as a Social Space in Turkey’. Journal for Architectural and Planning Research 28 (4): 336–358.
  • Pfister, L.F. 2012. ‘Post-Secularity Within Contemporary Chinese Philosophical Contexts’. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39 (1): 121–138.
  • Plessentin, U. 2012. ‘Die „Neuen Atheisten“ Als Religionspolitische Akteure’. In Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne, ed. Ulrich Berner and Johannes Quack, 81–112. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • Quack, Johannes. 2012a. ‘Arten Des Unglaubens Als ‚Mentalität‘: Religionskritische Traditionen in Indien’. In Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne, ed. Ulrich Berner and Johannes Quack, 113–138. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • ———. 2012b. ‘Religionswissenschaft, Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne’. In Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne, ed. Ulrich Berner and Johannes Quack, 7–29. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • Schielke, Samuli. 2012. ‘Being a Nonbeliever in a Time of Islamic Revival: Trajectories of Doubt and Certainty in Contemporary Egypt’. International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (02): 301–320. doi:10.1017/S0020743812000062.
  • Schlieter, J. 2012. ‘Der Rationalitätsbegriff Der Naturalistischen Religionskritik’. In Religion Und Kritik in Der Moderne, ed. Ulrich Berner and Johannes Quack, 195–218. Münster: Lit Verlag.
  • Sikka, S. 2012. ‘The Perils of Indian Secularism’. Constellations 19 (2): 288–304.
  • Sloan, S. 2012. ‘Regional Differences in Collecting Freethought Books in American Public Libraries: A Case of Self-censorship?’ Library Quarterly 82 (2): 183–205.
  • Smith, A.F. 2012. ‘Secularity and Biblical Literalism : Confronting the Case for Epistemological Diversity’. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71 (3): 205–219.
  • Smith, B., and J. Burkhalter. 2011. ‘Choice and Conflict Between Sacred and Secular Music : A Conversation Piece for Teaching Marketing Ethics’. Sustainable Global Marketplace 34: 227–229.
  • Taira, Teemu. 2012. ‘More Visible but Limited in Its Popularity: Atheism (and Atheists) in Finland’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 21–35.
  • Taira, Teemu, and Ruth Illman. 2012. ‘The New Visibility of Atheism in Europe’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 6): 1–2.
  • Tenenbaum, H.R., and M.D. Ruck. 2012. ‘British Adolescents- and Young Adults- Understanding and Reasoning About the Religious and Nonreligious Rights of Asylum-Seeker Youth’. Child Development 83 (3): 1102–1115.
  • Voas, David, and Steve Bruce. 2007. ‘The Spiritual Revolution: Another False Dawn for the Sacred’. In A Sociology of Spirituality, ed. K. Flanagan and P.C. Jupp, 43–62. Aldershot: Ashgate.
  • Waggoner, Michael D., ed. 2011. Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. New York: Routledge.
  • Wally. 2012. ‘Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a New Atheist Novel? A Claim Revisited’. Anglia: Zeitschrift Für Englische Philologie 130 (1): 95–119.
  • Wayne Carp, E. 2012. ‘The Atheist and the Christian: Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Jean Paton, and the Stigma of Illegitimacy in the 1950s’. Journal of The Historical Society 12 (2): 205–227. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5923.2012.00363.x.
  • Winters, S.F. 2012. ‘Religious Faith and Secular Hope in The Underland Chronicles’. Lion and the Unicorn 36 (1): 1–19.
  • Zenk, Thomas. 2012. ‘“Neuer Atheismus”: “New Atheism” in Germany’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 8): 36–51.
  • Zuckerman, Phil. 2012. ‘Contrasting Irreligious Orientation: Atheism and Secularity in the USA and Scandinavia’. Approaching Religion 2 (1) (June 7): 8–20.
Posted on by amhennessey News

New Events Report: Atheism and Non-Religion

The NSRN announces the publication of a new Events Report by Spencer Bullivant (University of Ottawa) on the “Atheism and Non-Religion” Panel Session at the 2012 annual conference of the British Sociological Association Sociology of Religion Group (BSA SocRel), “Religion and (In) Equalities” (March 28-30, 2012).

Please see the details and link to the document below:

Atheism and Non-Religion Panel Session (2012 BSA SocRel Annual Conference)
University of Chester, Chester, 29 March 2012
Report by Spencer Bullivant, University of Ottawa
Published by the NSRN, 21 July 2012

Posted on by Chris News

The conference is here… we have a hashtag! #nsrn

Who would have thought that we would finally get here? In just a couple of hours we will be kicking off the NSRN Conference in a damp and dreary London. For those of you who know what a hashtag is, I just wanted to let you know that we will be using the tag #nsrn throughout the conference.

If you want to follow official and unofficial comments on what is happening ‘live’ in the room at Goldsmiths University, if you want to see some pictures or ask questions or just have a bit of entertainment in the background, then set up a search on Twitter for #nsrn and start using the tag in your own tweets. I will be doing my best to keep the feed as up-to-date as possible throughout the next three days… we then hope that this will be a lasting archived legacy of the event that is about to ensue.

All that we ask is that you treat what people say during discussion sessions, at the meal, in the bar etc as private… but general themes and what people say in presentations is fair game. And, of course, I shouldn’t need to ask everyone to be civil 🙂

I’ll also be doing my best to keep the Facebook page up-to-date… amongst other things.

So – for those of you in the room, I hope that you will do your best to keep the rest of the NSRN world informed about this fabulous conference… and for those of you who couldn’t make it, I hope that this and some of the other planned outputs over the coming months mean that you have missed out entirely.

Posted on by Chris News

New ‘NSRN in the News’ Page

Just in time for the NSRN Conference, Lorna Mumford – one of the new members of the NSRN Online Team – has added a new page to the website which provides links to press articles relating to the NSRN or the work of network members. It is available here: http://nsrn.net/news/nsrn-in-the-news-2/

We hope that you enjoy have the opportunity to check out the latest ‘splashes’ that the NSRN has been making in the popular press, and that you will join us in thanking Lorna very much for her hard work.

Posted on by katieaston News, Uncategorized

News: Three Doctoral Fellowships in non-religiosity open for applications

ENP_PhD

Three Doctoral Research Fellows (E13 TV-G-U, 75% part-time) are sought by the Emmy Noether “Diversity of Non-Religiosity” Research Group at Goethe-University Frankfurt  based at the Institut für Ethnologie (Social Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy und History). The start date is 01.11.2012 and the positions are limited to a period of three years.

The Doctoral Fellows will develop their research projects under the supervision of the Principal Investigator. Their main task will be to complete individual research projects in collaboration with the other participants. They will have an independent budget for research and travel expenses. The Research Group further offers interdisciplinary and international collaborations and comprehensive supervision by the Principle Investigator who is also teaching and conducting research on this topic.

The Research Group is organized around the assumption that a comprehensive understanding of the role of religion(s) within contemporary societies has to take the “diversity of non-religiosity” into consideration. The aim of the Doctoral Fellowships is to conduct empirical research on non-religious individuals, groups or phenomena – preferably in different countries. For example topics may include but are not limited to indifference towards religion(s), worldviews alternative to religion(s), or criticism of religion(s) made in relation to atheist, humanist or skepticist thought or identity. The specific object of inquiry, methodology and theoretical approach will depend on the Doctoral Fellows’ training, interest, and research focus. Curiosity about the research topic, intellectual creativity, and an enjoyment of academic collaboration are crucial for the success of the project.

All applicants must hold a master’s degree (M.A.) or an equivalent qualification in anthropology, religious studies, sociology, or a related discipline. The University is an equal opportunities employer and supports women’s career development. Applications from women are thus explicitly welcome. Disabled applicants will be considered preferentially in case of equivalent qualifications.

Please send the electronic version of your application (including cover letter, Curriculum Vitae, university transcript/degree, two letters of recommendation, and a synopsis of the intended research project of approx. 5000 words) to: quack@em.uni-frankfurt.de by 31.07.2012. Please do not hesitate to contact Johannes Quack for further information concerning the research project and the application process.

Posted on by katieaston News, Publications

Publication: Approaching Religion Vol 2/1‏ The New Visibility of Atheism in Europe

A new publication has been announced of interest to the NSRN. Contributors below include the NSRN director Stephen Bullivant and other contributors to our upcoming annual conference.

Approaching Religion

Vol. 2/ 1 (June, 2011)

Theme: The New Visibility of Atheism in Europe

Contributors:

Grace Davie, Phil Zuckerman, Teemu Taira, Thomas Zenk, Teuvo Laitila, Tiina Mahlamäki, Gavin Hyman, Mattias Martinson, Stuart McAnulla, Stephen Bullivant, Lise Kanckos, Mikko Sillfors.

AR is published by the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History in Åbo, Finland. Its purpose is to publish current research on religion and to offer a platform for scholarly co-operation and debate within the field. The journal appears twice a year and consists of articles and book reviews. It addresses an international readership and, as the title suggests, approaches the field of religion from a broad perspective, engaging contributors from different theoretical and methodological traditions.