Between Liberation and Discord: How Freedom Fractures Expertise and Authority in North American Religious and Spiritual Contexts

In this wide-ranging, anthropologically informed roundtable, we ask how freedom may fracture expertise and authority in North American religious, spiritual, and political contexts, both online and off. Does freedom mean everyone can be an expert on their own terms, and that everyone gets to define their own truth? These questions have pressing urgency in the current climate of proliferating authorities and experts, which we do not limit to a “death” of expertise but rather an opening up of the category that could dissolve traditional expertise structures. Through varied lenses of astrology, environmental regulation, minority religious communities, online ecosystems, and vaccine refusal, among others, we examine the multivalent implications of freedom for authority and expertise. These implications offer potential paths both to resilience among disenfranchised communities and threats to public wellbeing.