Religion and the Social Sciences Unit

The Religion and Social Sciences Unit (RSS) supports scholarship at the intersection of the social sciences and religious or theological studies. Topic areas include the study of religious and theological questions through specific social scientific methodologies, the integration of theological and social scientific approaches to the study of religious communities and practices, and comparative assessments of current issues by humanities-based and social scientific methods.

As always, we welcome all proposals on any topic broadly related to religion and the social sciences, and encourage creative formats such as flash sessions, roundtables, discussion-based, collaborative sessions, etc. We particularly encourage pre-arranged sessions or papers session proposals to engage with a diversity of scholarship and scholars in regard to gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, institutional identity, rank, and those work outside of the academy.

If you think our unit is a good fit for your proposal, please be sure to select it as your first choice.

For the 2026 meeting in Denver, in addition to general topics in religion and the social sciences, we are interested in papers, papers session, and roundtable proposals that offer social scientific methodological and/or theoretical analyses in regard to:

• Faith-Based Actors in Tumultuous Times: The U.S. has entered an era of increasing precarity and fear. LGBTQ+ persons fear increasing loss of fundamental rights such as marriage equality. Members of immigrant communities fear increasing detainment and deportation. Women fear increasing loss of reproductive rights and autonomy over their bodies. Economically precarious Americans fear the increasing loss of social safety nets such as health insurance subsidies and SNAP benefits. For many, the future feels foreclosed. Into this space, faith-based actors offer creative responses to meet the needs of the times. We invite papers that use social scientific methods and/or scholarship to explore how faith-based communities are mobilizing, organizing, demonstrating, or otherwise stepping in to contest and/or fill the gaps left by the loss of protections and social assistance to vulnerable populations. 

• Disrupted Futures in Latinx/e Faith Communities: Latinx/e faith communities are facing profound disruption as their members navigate the constant possibility of ICE raids, deportation, family separation, and ethnic profiling. We invite papers that offer social scientific research and empirical/applied religious study of  on-the ground tactics and strategies for survival, resistance, and resilience within and among these communities, including how Latinx/e faith communities are acting in tangible ways to protect vulnerable individuals, families, and communities.

• Re-membering and Dis-membering the Past, Present, and Future:  We invite papers or pre-arranged panels that explore re-membering and dis-membering as a metaphor for shifting community formations and social connection, as well as the ways we interpret the present and construct futures with data from the past. Papers may explore questions such as: How is collective identity shaped in moments of crisis? To what extent are existing and past religious, spiritual, and moral resources used in novel ways amidst unsettled times and uncertain futures to define individual and collective visions of flourishing? How are humans collectively re-imagining and narrating the good life and a good society at both micro and macro levels at a time when so many shared ideals seem to be collapsing? What are social and spiritual models for imagining and organizing for a shared future amidst difference? 

• Religion, Technofacist Futures, and Resistance: We welcome papers or pre-arranged panels that critically explore the complex ways that religion and spirituality intersect with emerging technologies, including bio-medical technologies, AI, and LLMs; techno-driven visions of the ideal human and society; and the formation of new digital communities and modes of transmission. Relatedly, as we think about the future, what critical questions do the social sciences and specifically the social scientific study of religion need to be asking about the impact of the technology industry on religious people, religious communities, and religion in public life? To what extent are we seeing convergences between the religious right (or far-right) and Silicon Valley and/or the emerging modes of spiritual and social resistance?

• Religion and the Anthropology of the Future: Arjun Appadurai writes about the “anthropology of the future”  -- the need for scholars to examine the “many ways in which humanity has encountered, managed, and anticipated the future as a cultural horizon.” Relatedly, adrienne maree brown reminds us, the quest to claim the future often involves struggle in the present between competing social-moral-political imaginations. Thus, we invite papers or pre-arranged panels that draw on the social sciences to examine the conditions under which future horizons are opened, made possible, or curtailed. What is the role of religion and spirituality in this process? We are especially interested in research that illuminates the theoretical and empirical stakes of human efforts to imagine alternative futures. Such work may include things like:
  • Study of actions by religious people and communities intended to make the imagined future visible in the present and/or to transcend the past, as well as efforts to challenge or interrogate particular visions of the future. 
  • Study of tools, strategies, practices, discourses, and ideals used to motivate people towards and shape the contours of  a hoped-for future -- and the role of religion and spirituality in this process. 
  • Study of how efforts to instantiate and embody the future in the present may contain religious logics that work towards both progressive and conservative ends.
  • Attention to how individuals and groups are mapping their ideal futures and critiquing the present; seeking to materialize, work out conditions for future belonging in the community-to-come - i.e. sociopolitical contours, values, ethics.