Rethinking Religion

Listen to a public talk by Abdou Filali-Ansary, Research Professor at the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) in London, UK.

Martin Seymour Lipset stressed, more than fifty years ago, that ‘prerequisites’ for democracy include economic development and political legitimacy. Since the beginning of the so called Arab Spring, aspects of political legitimacy dominate discussions, while economic development seems to have been put on the back burner, if not forgotten altogether. In this talk, Dr. Filali-Ansary will revisit the way in which issues of legitimacy are linked to discussions of religious and cultural traditions. He will explore how this leads us to raise fresh questions about the on-going transitions in Muslim contexts and the prospects of democratisation in the Third World, more generally.

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Listen to a lecture by Eric Gregory, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, delivered at Columbia University on April 2, 2013. Recent developments in political theory, religious studies, and social criticism have led to revived interest in political theology as an alternative to more conventional approaches to “religion and politics.”  This lecture examines these developments in light of various encounters with the contested legacy of Augustine of Hippo.  Particular focus will be given to debates about secularity, realism, and moral sentiment in democratic culture.

Professor Gregory is the author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (University of Chicago Press, 2008). His interests include religious and philosophical ethics, theology, political theory, law and religion, and the role of religion in public life. In 2007 he was awarded Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned an M.Phil. and Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale University.

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On Tuesday, March 12th, 2013, Eddie Glaude considered how the “blind spots” in African American religious historiography block the way to a more nuanced engagement with the powerful phenomenon of celebrity preachers and their mega churches.  More specifically, he examined W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic essay, “Of the Faith of the Fathers,” as a paradigmatic example of the evasion of forms of African American Christian expression that complicate traditional narratives of the prophetic role of black churches in African American politics.  (more…)

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Listen to a recent conversation with Guy Ben-Porat, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Policy & Administration at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His most recent publication is Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization  of Contemporary Israel. A thriving, yet small, liberal component in Israeli society has frequently taken issue with the constraints imposed by religious orthodoxy, largely with limited success. However, Guy Ben-Porat suggests, in recent years, in part because of demographic changes and in part because of the influence of an increasingly consumer-oriented society, dramatic changes have occurred in secularization of significant parts of public and private lives. Even though these fissures often have more to do with lifestyle choices and economics than with political or religious ideology, the demands and choices of a secular public and a burgeoning religious presence in the government are becoming ever more difficult to reconcile. The evidence, which the author has accrued from numerous interviews and a detailed survey, is nowhere more telling than in areas that demand religious sanction such as marriage, burial, the sale of pork, and the operation of businesses on the Sabbath. The conclusion of this research lay beyond the Israeli case study and suggest that secularization, defined as the decline of religious authority, can evolve independently from secularism, a world view, and a liberal ideology. Consequently, while secularization can be observed in Israel, its political implications regarding liberalism, freedom and equality are by no means certain.

Co-Sponsored by The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life

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Listen to a talk by Alyshia Gálvez, at Columbia University on Tuesday, February 12th, 2013.

Professor Galvez is a cultural anthropologist (PhD, NYU 2004) whose work focuses on the efforts by Mexican immigrants in New York City to achieve the rights of citizenship. This talk asks: How do spaces of devotion become spaces of activism? What role does faith play in the construction of civic spaces and civil society among recent immigrant groups? What are the limitations of these forms of social mobilization? This talk will explore a decade of Guadalupan-based devotion and activism for immigration rights among recent Mexican immigrants in New York City. Based on Gálvez’s extended ethnographic research in New York City and many years of activism and advocacy, she will reflect on the changing immigrant rights movement and its intersection with faith based institutions and organizations.

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Listen to  talk by Jose Casanova, one of the world’s top scholars in the sociology of religion. The talk will explore, first, the concept of diffused “civil” religion in contradistinction to differentiated “eclesiastical” or “denominational” religion. It will then examine the pattern of congruent relations between “civil” and “denominational” religion in America in comparison to two divergent European patterns: the French laicist oppositional model between civil and Catholic religion and the Nordic secular integrational model between civil and Lutheran religion. Finally, it will examine the conditions under which both “civil” and “denominational” religions in America may turn “uncivil,” ending with some critical reflections about the contemporary culture wars around gender and sexual mores. Jose Casanova is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center’s Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular.

Throughout the 2013 Spring term, the IRCPL, in conjunction with the Department of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, will present public conversations that explore the often contentious role of religion in American political and public life. Seeking to further understand the relationship between religion and politics in the United States, the series will explore a number of timely topics that intersect with religion, such as civil religion, public discourses of morality, and reproductive and sexual rights. The series marks the launch of a new Religion in America program area at the IRCPL, which will seek to foster inter-disciplinary research, scholarship, and public discussion on the relationship of religion to American politics and society.

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Politics, Religion, and the Presidential Race: Jesse Jackson and Katrina vanden Heuvel Part 1

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Listen to a public conversation with Wallace S. Broecker, the “Grandfather of Climate Science,” on the subject of climate change, natural disasters, and apocalyptic visions and predictions. Wally Broecker is the Newberry Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He is also a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and an Academic Committee member of the Earth Institute. Broecker is arguably one of the world’s greatest living geoscientists.

Moderated by The New York Times correspondent John M. Broder. A reporter for the Times since 1996, Broder took over coverage of energy and environment in Washington after covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He is responsible for following domestic legislative issues, advances and energy technology and international climate-change negotiations.

Apocalypse Now: End Time and the Contemporary Imaginary is a yearlong series of conversations with writers that explores our current fascination with apocalyptic visions.

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Listen to a roundtable discussion with Etienne Balibar, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Lydia H. Liu, and Samuel Moyn. Moderated by Josef Sorett.

The universalism of human rights is often countered with cultural relativism, particularism, and other symmetric or dissymmetric oppositions. But what are the conditions under which one speaks for or against a certain kind of universalism? Does the logic of inclusion/exclusion apply to both sides of the dichotomy? For instance, is racism intrinsic to the discourse of human rights? What are the limitations of “human rights” as a concept or as a political project for the purpose of framing struggles for social justice? The panelists on this roundtable will debate and exchange views on these questions as they aim to reframe the discussion of human rights in the contemporary world.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

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Listen to a talk with Francesca E. S. Montemaggi, presenting findings from an ethnography in a Christian evangelical church in Wales, UK. In the pluralistic environment of Western liberal democracies, a strand of North American Christian evangelicalism has been promoting successful a model of church-doing that seeks to respond to contemporary diversity of life-styles. The example of church-doing proposed by US Pastor Rick Warren focuses on community. In the UK, Christians seeking to revive contemporary Christianity have been receptive to this ‘vision’. This talk  maintains that this model operates a shift from doctrine to community. The church in the study began with the vision of a church as a faith-driven community centre. The aim was to create a welcoming place where everybody could feel accepted.

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