Discourses of Crisis and the Study of Religion
Lauren Horn Griffin [+–]
Louisiana State University
After an opening section that explores the deployment of “crisis” in various aspects of higher education, this volume is structures the critical approach to the category of crisis through four distinct sections: Language, Lexicon, Locus, and Locution. The section on Language examines the social rhetoric that emerges in historical moments of rupture, resistance, and reconstitution. The section on Lexicon considers different projects of persuasion exemplified in the critical study of religion in and through crisis. The section on Locus discusses three instances of religious institutions adapting to “crises” in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia, highlighting that religions are not fixed entities but living constructions. The final section, Locution, brings together senior scholars to assess the stated aim of the American Academy of Religion (i.e., “thinking about the actual human implications of religion in a world upended”) and explain how we might provide an alternative to that use of crisis in the field of religious studies. The book is concluded with an Afterword by Aaron Hughes.
Series: NAASR Working Papers
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: Critiquing “Crisis” in Higher Education
Part II: Language: Crisis as a Turning Point
Scarborough. She researches and teaches in the areas of nineteenth and twentieth century
Continental philosophy, philosophical and religious ethics, and the academic study of religion.
University. His work focuses on critical approaches to the study of religion with an emphasis on the Roman imperial period, the modern historiography of ancient religions, and magic and
religion in the ancient and modern world.
Part III: Lexicon: Crisis as Method in the Study of Religion
Florida. He teaches in the areas of the history of Christian thought, theories and methods in religious studies, modern religious thought, and theoretical issues in religion and politics. He is the author of Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation (Oxford, 2012), Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Luther (Oxford, 2017), and Bonhoeffer on Resistance (Oxford, 2018).
Matt Sheedy holds a Ph.D. in the study of religion and is a visiting professor of North American Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. His research interests include critical social theory, theories of secularism and atheism, as well as representations of Christianity, Islam, and Native American traditions in popular and political culture. He is the author of Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility (Routledge, 2021).
Part IV: Locus: Landmarks in Religious Adaptations in the Face of Crisis
Waterloo. Ben’s research interests include agricultural ethics and the relationship between
religious organizations and government policy. His current research examines how Catholic
communities across Canada advocate for social and ecological justice through land-based
agricultural training programs.
Part V: Locution: Upending the Discipline