#religion
Conference on Populism, Nationalism, and the Future of Democracy (Announcement)
Sponsored by the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in Collaboration with the University of Denver You must register in order to receive a participation
Special Issue On Religion and Bioethics (Call for Papers)
The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to the intersection of religion and bioethics It
Religion and Bioethics (Conferencee)
Sponsored by the The Whitestone Foundation dba The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in collaboration with the University of Denver It highlights
Healing As A Multimedia Practice – Contemporary Spirituality In Turkey, Part 1 (Duygu Sendag)
Zeynep, a 37-year-old Turkish woman, comes from a secular family background. She has traveled to Bali and India on different occasions to participate in yoga
Conference on Religion and Bioethics – Call for Proposals
This call for proposals frames a conference on religion and bioethics, inviting interdisciplinary work on ethics, theology, policy, and emerging The argument
Sikh Environmental Ethics-Theory and Praxis Part 1 (Harpreet Kaur)
Eco-philosophy, or ecosophy, offers insight into the relationship of living beings with their environment. The intersection of faith and eco-philosophy is known
Metaphysical Protestantism-A Comparative Literary Ecology (Zane Johnson)
The influence of religions on human attitudes toward the non-human, whether beneficent or deleterious, has been the subject of serious scholarly debate since at
Sikhs As Subalterns – Voice, Inequality, And Power, Part 3 (Nirvikar Singh)
The following is the third installment of a three part series. The first can be found here, the second here. It is published as a catalogued .PDF in article in
Sikhs As Subalterns – Voice, Inequality, And Power, Part 2 (Nirvikar Singh)
The following is the second installment of a three part series. The first can be found here. It is published as a catalogued .PDF in article in the latest issue
The Sacred As Bordering Practice, Part 2 (Anna-Maria Edlinger)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first portion can be found here. It was originally published in issue 22.1 of the Journal for Cultural and
The Sacred As Bordering Practice, Part 1 (Anna-Maria Edlinger)
Part 1 theorizes the sacred as bordering practice, showing how ritual and discourse draw limits, authorize belonging, and organize contested social and
George Batailles On Ethnographic Surrealism And “The Limits Of The Useful” – Review Essay (Matt Waggoner)
Georges Bataille, The Limit of the Useful. Translated and edited by Corey Austin Knudson and Tomas Elliott. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022. Hardback. 360 pages
Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, And The Quotidian Academic Terror Of “Christian Nationalism”
The following essay appeared recently in The New Polis. It is republished here because of its timeliness and importance. What exactly is Christian nationalism?
Religious Studies As The “State Religion” Of Neoliberalism, Part 3 (Carl Raschke)
The following is the last of a three-part series. The first can be found here , the second here. A genealogy of the neoliberalization, together with the
Religious Studies As The “State Religion” Of Neoliberalism, Part 2 (Carl Raschke)
The following is the second of a three-part series. The first can be found here . The supreme achievement of neoliberalism, according to Han, is that it has
Religious Studies As The “State Religion” Of Neoliberalism, Part 1 (Carl Raschke)
> “Neptunus alii per alia, poterunt intellegi qui qualesque sint, quoque eos nomine consuetudo nuncupaverit, hoc eos et venerari et colere debemus.” – Cicero
Embodiment – A Conference On The Crisis In Contemporary Theory And The Humanities (Announcement)
You must register in advance (see below) whereupon you will automatically receive a participation link. If you are having trouble, please email us It highlights
Orientalism, Ontology, And Orientation – A Muslim Perspective On Charles H. Long, Part 2 (Mehnaz Afridi)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. The full article is published in the spring 2022 issue of the Journal for
Orientalism, Ontology, And Orientation – A Muslim Perspective On Charles H. Long, Part 1 (Mehnaz Afridi)
The following is the first of a two-part series. The full article is published in the spring 2022 issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory
The Legacy Of Charles H. Long – Resisting and Short-Circuiting the Discourses Of Exclusion In The Theory And Practice Of Administration (Victor E. Taylor)
The following essay introduces the upcoming volume of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory featuring reflections on the work of renowned religious
Geschlecht III – Authentic Faith, Religion, And Politics In Derrida’s Readings Of Heidegger’s “Geist”, Part 3 (Jake Sirota)
The following is the third of a three-part series. The first can be found here, the second here. Derrida’s suspicion of and discomfort with the seemingly
Geschlecht III – Authentic Faith, Religion, And Politics In Derrida’s Readings of Heidegger’s “Geist”, Part 2 (Jake Sirota)
The following is the second of a three-part series. The first can be found here. At this point Derrida’s appraisal of Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics
Geschlecht III – Authentic Faith, Religion, And Politics In Derrida’s Readings of Heidegger’s “Geist”, Part 1 (Jake Sirota)
Jacques Derrida’s prolonged and intimate proximity to the thought of Martin Heidegger has played a significant role in the understanding and debate of Derrida’s
Locating The Oceanic In Sylvia Wynter’s “Demonic Ground”, Part 2 (Justine M. Bakker)
Part 2 advances the oceanic reading of Wynter by detailing method and stakes, relating demonic ground to coloniality, black study, and experimental theoretical
Locating The Oceanic in Sylvia Wynter’s “Demonic Ground”, Part 1 (Justine M. Bakker)
Part 1 introduces an oceanic reading of Sylvia Wynter's “Demonic Ground,” developing the conceptual frame and tracing how embodiment, race, and poetics
Entheogens, Spirituality, And Modern Myths, Part 2 (John Cuda)
The following is the second of a three-part series. The first can be found here. Symbolically, the idea of going beyond the edge of the ordinary world to
Entheogens, Spirituality, And Modern Myths, Part 1 (John Cuda)
The following is the first of a three-part series. In this article I seek to analyze spiritual phenomena using contemporary mythological and pop-cultural
“Teach Me To Do What’s Right” – Faith, Hope, And Love As Post-Religious Virtues, Part 1 (A.G. Holdier)
> “God is the ‘beyond’ in the midst of our life.” > > – Dietrich Bonhoeffer > > “Are you lost, Father?” > > “Sorry?” > > “Are you lost?” > > “No It highlights
Critical Conversations 10 – “Tenderness,” Or Putting Neoliberalism On The Analyst’s Couch (Announcement)
When: Tuesday, June 29, 10am Mountain Standard Time How: Zoom. By Advance Registration. Please register at the following link below It highlights key arguments
Critical Conversations 9 – Economic Theology And The Indebtedness Of Everyday Life (Announcement)
Participants are invited to join us live in the ninth of a monthly series of “Critical Conversations” (Zoom webinars) with eminent scholars from around the
Reorientation In The Field – Why Religion Matters, Part 2 (Wendy Felese)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. The article was first given at a conference in 2019 in Athens, Greece (2019).
Reorientation In The Field – Why Religion Matters, Part 1 (Wendy Felese)
The following is the first of a two-part series. It was originally published at a 2019 conference in Athens, Greece.1 When teaching classes like World Religions
Tsimtsum In Life Of Pi, Part 4 (Daniel Reiser)
The following is the last of a four-part series. The first can be found here, the second here, the third here. Is what Martel presents his readers only a
Tsimtsum In Life Of Pi, Part 3 (Daniel Reiser)
The following is the third of a four-part series. The first can be found here, the second here. Beyond the question of metaphor and reality, the greatest
Sexual Difference And The Vatican – A Lacanian Response, Part 3 (Melissa Conroy)
The following is the second of a three-part series. The first can be found here, the second here. Likewise, Teresa de Lauretis argues that gender is best
Religious Studies – The Final Colonization Of American Indians, Part 2 (Tink Tinker, wazhazhe udsethe)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. Indian cultures are very complex, and Osage culture is no different in that
Religious Studies – The Final Colonization Of American Indians, Part 1 (Tink Tinker, wazhazhe udsethe)
The following is the first of a two-part series. The second can be found here. In late 2019 I was invited to deliver a paper at an international symposium
“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” And The Inhospitable State – Abrahamic Hospitality And The Limits Of Multiculturalism, Part 1 (Emily McAvan)
> “Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” (Romans 12:13 NIV) > > “he who believes in Allah and the Last Day should show hospitality to
Reframing The Adwa Victory As A Decolonizing Praxis – Discourse Around Colonization In The Ethiopian Context, Part 2 (Rode Molla)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. Foucault, in his book, Discipline, and Punish, describes how the human body is
Fetishism And The Erasure Of Identity, Part 2 (Roger Green)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The initial installment can be found here. Although we must constantly remember that the fetish is the product
Fetishism And The Erasure Of Identity, Part 1 (Roger Green)
The following is the first of a two-part series. The second installment can be found here. The concept of fetishism has a special place within the long history
The “New Hegel” And The Question Of God, Part 2 (Gavin Hyman)
The following is the second installment of a three-part series. The first one can be found here. Slavoj Žižek’s return to God in the context of his wider return
The “New Hegel” And The Question Of God, Part 1 (Gavin Hyman)
Among recent developments in continental philosophy and religious thought, one of the most prominent has been a ‘return to Hegel.’ It has been exemplified in
From Kant to Hölderlin – Poetry And Religion In The Wake Of Philosophical Aesthetics, Part 3 (Jakob Deibl)
The following is the second installment of a three-part series. The first one can be found here, the second one here. Translated by Philipp Schlögl It
Call For Papers – Special Issue On Walter Benjamin And Religion
What does Walter Benjamin’s work suggest about religion and the methods of studying it? This special issue of The Journal for Cultural and Religious Studies
From Kant to Hölderlin – Poetry And Religion In The Wake Of Philosophical Aesthetics, Part 1 (Jakob Deibl)
The following is the first installment of a three-part series. Translated by Philipp Schlögl. Friederich Hölderlin’s famous quote “Thus all Religion would be
Jonathan Edwards And The Vegan Elect – An Unconventional Calvinist Reading, Part 1 (Tadd Ruetenik)
In 1895, when Myrtle Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity School of Christianity, first became a vegetarian, she said that “the appetite left me without my even
God And Salvation, Lecture 8 (Johannes Zachhuber)
This is the eighth lecture in an eight-lecture series. The most recent lecture can be found here. The paper these lectures support is entitled “God, Christ, and
Review – The Intimate Universal (Stephen Bujno)
*William Desmond, The Intimate Universal: The Hidden Porosity Among Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Politics. Columbia University Press, 2016. 520 pages
Review – The Enigmatic Absolute (Stanimir Panayotov)
*Joshua Ramey and Matthew S. Haar Farris (Eds.), Speculation, Heresy, and Gnosis in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion: The Enigmatic Absolute 299 pages.
Religion And Mental Health – The Therapuetic Value Of The Teachings of Jesus, Part 2 (Thomas Roberts and Delbert Hayden)
The following is the second part in a two-part installment. You can find the first part here. Maintaining a State of Hope and Taking a Transcendent Perspective
Re-Envisioning Religious Studies As A Global Discipline – A Pre-AAR Symposium
The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver in conjunction with its partner faculty
Religion And Mental Health – The Therapeutic Value Of The Teachings Of Jesus , Part 1 (Thomas Roberts And Delbert Hayden)
The following is the first part in a two-part installment. The second part can be found here. Author Note: The authors of this article take the position that
Towards A New Comparative Methodology In Religious Studies (Kara Roberts)
Author Note: The following was originally written as the introduction to a much longer comparative project between two religious myths Amy Balogh. It highlights
Review – Neurotheological Nuances (Joshua Canzona)
Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality. Newberg, Andrew. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. ISBN 9780231179041. Hardback
Review – Medicinal Religion (Aaron Klink)
*Balboni, Michael J. and Peteet, John R. eds. Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice ISBN 9780190272432 Hardcover.
Negative Theology And Its Problems: Barth And Marion, Lecture 3 (Johannes Zachhuber)
The following is the third lecture in an eight-lecture series. I have described in last week’s lecture how, during the 19th century, some serious challenges
The Dangers Of Dealing With Derrida – Revisiting the Caputo-Hägglund Debate On The “Religious” Reading Of Deconstruction, Part 3 (Neal DeRoo)
The following is the third installment of a three-part series. The first one can be found here, the second here. But one could embrace another prevalence for
Beyond Religious Ideas – The Legacy Of Max Weber In Critical Theory And Critical Religion (Joel Harrison)
This article was initially published in The New Polis, March 23, 2018. In his essay “The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,” Donald Wiebe
The Critique Of Theism – Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Lecture 2 (Johannes Zachhuber)
The following is the second lecture in an eight-lecture series. The first can be found here. I introduced these lectures last week by pointing out the unique
Thinking About God In A Pluralistic World – The Challenge of Modern Theology, Lecture 1 (Johannes Zachhuber)
The following is the first lecture in an eight lecture series. A couple of days ago, I read a column in a national newspaper whose title had a strange
Secularism And Its Discontents – On Charting Pathways With A Phenomenology Of Religion, Part 1 (Ludger Hagerdorn and Michael Staudigl)
*The following is the introductory article for the Spring 2018 issue (Vol. 17, No. 2) of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory It highlights key
New Religions in Brazil – A Game Between Relativism and Fundamentalism (Silas Guerriero)
Speaking of new religious movements in Brazil implies, above all, in defining what we refer to when we speak of “new religions.” We have already had an
Review – An Uncritical Critique of Theism (Rebekah Gordon)
Religion Within Reason. Cahn, Steven M. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780231181617. Paperback. 93 pages.** It is amazing that a book of less
Review—Whither Philosophy of Religion? (Benjamin Steele-Fisher)
**Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Zizek. Edited by Philip Goodchild and Hollis Phelps. New York: Routledge, 2017 It highlights
Slow Journalism? Ethnography as a Means of Understanding Religious Social Activism, Part 2 (James V. Spickard)
The following is a talk presented at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and is the second installment of a two-part series
Slow Journalism? Ethnography As A Means Of Understanding Religious Social Activism, Part 1 (James V. Spickard)
The following is a talk presented at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and is the first installment of a two-part series
Religious Studies and Comparative Theology – An Appraisal (Joshua Samuel)
The title “religious scholar,” it must be remembered, is a very ambiguous categorization. It could either mean those who are engaged in academic work in the
Framing Religious Conflict and Violence – Insights from Historical Institutionalism, Part 2 (Vivek Swaroop Sharma)
The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment can be found here. There are two important qualifications to the following
Review – Mysticism As Language Game (Adam Loch)
*Tugendhat, Ernst. Egocentricity and Mysticism: An Anthropological Study. Translated by Alexei Procyshyn and Mario Wenning ISBN-10: 0231169124. It highlights
Review – Bahai Religion And Religious Cycles (Rebekah Gordon)
Sergeev, Mikhail. Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity, and the Baha’i Faith. Amsterdam: Brill Rodopi, 2015. ISBN-10:9004300031. Paperback
Religious Autonomy As Secularism’s Silent Partner (Darshan Datar)
Scholarship has noted that the genealogical trajectory of a state has consistently had an impact on the evolution of state-church relationships It highlights
Review – Caputo’s “Spooky” Call To Theology (Rob Kennedy)
*Caputo, John D., Moody, Sarah, and DeLay, Tad., It Spooks: Living In Response To An Unheard Call. Rapid City SD: Shelter50 Publishing Collective, 2015
Untimely Meditations on Techno-Theology and Theo-Poetics, Part 1 (John Panteleimon Manoussakis)
The following is the first half of the article. The second installment can be found here. Philosophy’s very first utterance, according to Aristotle, present us
Review – Theologies of the Boss (James Cochran)
*Yadin-Israel, Azzan. The Grace of God and the Grace of Man: The Theologies of Bruce Springsteen. Highland Park: Lingua Press, 2016. ISBN-10: 0692718516
Spinoza’s Theory of Religion – Stabilized Superstition (Ehud Benor)
The best interpretations of Spinoza’s philosophy would lead us to believe that, for Spinoza, religion is superstition. Henry Allison’s account is an excellent
Review – New Trends In The Theory And Methods For Studying Religion (David Kim)
Kovács, Ábrahám, and James L. Cox, Editors. New Trends and Recurring Issues in the Study of Religion: Context and Overview. Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2014
Review – Eugene Thacker’s “Cosmic Pessimism” (N.N. Trakakis)
*Thacker, Eugene. Cosmic Pessimism. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2015. ISBN-10: 193756147X. E-book, paperback. 55 pages.* It might be worth quoting from
From Heathen to Sub-Human – A Genealogy of the Influence of the Decline of Religion on the Rise of Modern Racism, Part 2 (Oludamini Ogunnaike)
The following is the second part of an article in three installments that initially appeared in July 2016 in Open Theology 2:2016 785-203 It highlights
Review – Aaron Hughes’ ‘Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity’ (Daniel Tutt)
*Hughes, Aaron. Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity: An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception. London: Equinox Publishing, 2016 It
Review – Love’s Unfortunate Presence between Faith and Belief (Daniel Boscaljon)
*Schrijvers, Joeri. Between Faith and Belief: Toward a Contemporary Phenomenology of Religious Life (SUNY Series in Theology and Continental Thought) It
Review – Digital Technologies and Religion in the Postmodern Era (Albert McClure)
*Han, Sam. Technologies of Religion: Spheres of the Sacred in a Post-Secular Modernity. Routledge Research in Information Technology and Society 19 142 pages.
Review – The Search For Transcendence In The “Material Phenomenology” of David Foster Wallace (Jeff Appel)
*Miller, Adam S. The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom and Addiction in an Age of Distraction. New York: Bloomsburg Academic, 2016 It highlights
Review – The Evolution of the Religious Factor in Fantasy Role-Playing Games (Jeffrey Scholes)
*Laycock, Joseph P. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds ISBN-10: 0520284925. It
Review – Donovan Schaefer’s Call For a Materialist Turn In Religious Theory (Jonathan Russell)
*Schaefer, Donovan O. Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2015. ISBN 10: 978-0-8223-5982-1, 10: It highlights
Renegade Hinduism Scholar Featured In Norton’s Anthology of World Religions
The just-released, multi-volume Norton Anthology of World Religions is a major project of substance undertaken by a group of world-renowned scholars in
Recovering the Unconscious – A Conference on the Intersection of Psychoanalysis With Politics, Philosophy, and Religion – CFP
A Conference on the Intersection of Psychoanalysis With Politics, Philosophy, and Religion Sponsored by the University of Denver and the Colorado Analytic Forum
Spiritual Erotics, Part 1 – Affect Theory and the Transformation of Machismo Among Latino Pentecostal Men
From time to time Religious Theory (RT) invites well-known academic authors to outline current book projects that have not yet been published S. It highlights
Review Essay – Peter Sloterdijk on Social Bonds, Freedom, and Religion
The English reception of Peter Sloterdijk has been ambivalent at best, relying largely on hearsay from European interlocutors (Žižek especially) or gossip about
The Secularizing Ethos and the End of Biblical Authority – How Today’s Evangelicals Abandoned Evangelicalism
So reads the title of a recent article in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The author, Jim Hinch, begins his piece with the conversion story of A. J J.
Conferences and CFPs – Upcoming
Beyond Habermas? Critical Theory, Political Theology, and Interreligious Dialogue “Habermas’ postsecular perspective of socio-political integration has had a