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Theme: Modes of Digital Religion: Research Methods, Christian Traditionalism on Twitter, and Online Worship during Covid-19
Saturday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM (In Person)
This panel examines two aspects of digital religion: the use of Twitter by Christian traditionalists and the use of digital modes of worship during the Covid-19 pandemic. Authors utilize a range of research methods, from qualitative digital research and personal interviews to big data and machine learning approaches. The first paper analyzes the discourse of Brazilian radical traditionalist Catholics on Twitter regarding environmental, economic, and theological concerns. The second paper examines how Orthodox Christian Twitter users focus on physiognomy as a tool of visual verification to determine racial and religious identities, a practice that reinvigorates scientific racism through popular discourse. The third paper relies on interviews with Boston-area Catholics to show divergences in lay perceptions of the authenticity of online worship. The fourth paper explores how the Burning Man festival sought to recreate ecstatic moments when it transitioned its rituals and communal experience to a virtual context.
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Theme: New Works in the Sociology of Asian American Religions
Saturday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM (In Person)
In this roundtable, three sociologists of religion discuss their recent books and how each provides important new insights for the study of Asian American religions. Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley (2022) explores how tech companies in Silicon Valley bring religious practices such as yoga and meditation into the workplace and end up spiritualizing work itself. Stephen Cherry’s Importing Care, Faithful Service: Filipino and Indian American Nurses at a Veterans Hospital (2022) investigates how immigrant Filipino and Indian Catholic nurses navigate xenophobia and church-state separation at a government hospital in Houston. Chenxing Han’s Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (2021) critiques stereotypes of Asian American Buddhists while highlighting nuance among young, socially engaged Buddhists of diverse backgrounds. These works chart new territories in the sociology of religion, Asian American religions, globalization of religion, and religious studies.
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Theme: Robert Wuthnow and the Sociology of Religion in America
Sunday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM (In Person)
This roundtable panel considers the work and legacy of Robert Wuthnow, one of the foremost sociologists of religion in America. Wuthnow is the author of more than forty books and numerous articles about religion, spirituality, civil society, faith communities, and American culture. His scholarship has reshaped several fields in the study of religion and in cultural sociology, including on themes such as religious diversity, spiritual seeking, socio-political fracturing, immigration, experimentation in religion, the religious lives of young adults, spirituality and the arts, faith-based services, religion in small towns, civil society, and public religion. In this panel, several eminent sociologists of religion discuss Wuthnow’s influence and continuing relevance in the sociology of American religions. After the panelists present their reflections, Robert Wuthnow will respond.
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Theme: Secular Ambivalence and Secular Misfits: A Roundtable on Joseph Blankholm’s The Secular Paradox (New York University Press, 2022)
Sunday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (In Person)
In this roundtable, scholars of secularism from several disciplines respond to Joseph Blankholm’s *The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious* (2022), an ethnography of secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States. Blankholm merges the critique of secularism, which has largely taken place in anthropology, and the study of secular people, which is largely in sociology. Blankholm argues that, despite their desire to avoid religion, nonbelievers often seem religious because Christianity influences the culture around them so deeply. The book also explores how very secular people are ambivalent toward belief, community, ritual, conversion, and tradition. Blankholm highlights the experiences of “secular misfits,” such as women, people of color, and people who have left non-Christian religions, who do not conform to normative conceptions of secularism in the U.S. The book draws from and is a major contribution to sociology, anthropology, religious studies, secular studies, and continental philosophy.
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Theme: Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations: Insights from Churches Across the US
Monday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM (In Person)
Since March of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has caused every facet of social life to change and religious life in the United States has been far from exempt. Technological advances like Zoom have allowed congregations to adapt quickly, but questions remain as to how and whether churches will be able to pivot out of the pandemic landscape in the long-term. At the same time, American religious congregations have grappled not only with the logistical and ideological challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the polarization of the 2020 presidential election and the societal reckoning over structural racism following the high-profile police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. This panel presents findings on the lived experience of religious life and congregational innovation during the pandemic through the collection of over 50 congregational case studies across the US as part of the “Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations” study.
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Theme: A Joyfully Serious Man: The Life of Robert Bellah (Princeton University Press, 2021): A Conversation with Author, Matteo Bortolini
Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (In Person)
The recent publication of Bellah’s biography provides the AAR with a window into the scientific study of religious life from the early 1950’s when Bellah was student of Talcott Parsons at Harvard through the publication of his magnum opus, *Religion in Human Evolution*.
The book has been highly acclaimed. As stated by one of the nominators of the AAR book award for *A Joyfully Serious Man*, the book is ultimately “about the study of religion. In all his writing, as well as in his private life, Bellah was searching for an understanding of what religion was, and how it both shapes and is shaped by the social forces around him.
Three scholars will comment the biography of Bellah and engage the author in a conversation based upon their disciplines.
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Theme: Religion and Social Justice: Navigating Race, Sexuality, and Politics in Faith Communities
Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (In Person)
This panel explores how diverse faith communities navigate issues of race, sexuality, and politics in the Unites States, Canada, and Uganda. The first paper relies on personal interviews with racialized and LGBTQIA+ seminary students to show how institutional anti-Blackness and heteronormativity create negative experiences for these students. Drawing on a large survey and personal interviews, the second paper examines how members of the Alliance of Baptists perceive the denomination’s efforts to confront whiteness and improve inclusivity. The third paper relies on personal interviews and digital media analysis to examine how Native American activists and allies have utilized spiritual and scientific frames to oppose the construction of an oil pipeline on indigenous territory. Based on interviews and analysis of recent political events in Uganda, the fourth paper explores the tensions between accommodationist Christian and Muslim leaders and younger generations who are pushing them to support political change.
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Theme: Framing and Mobilizing Religion: National Contexts, Social Values, and the Meaning of Religion
Tuesday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM (In Person)
This panel investigates how religion is framed and mobilized across national and local contexts. The first paper relies on ethnographic interviews with members of a “liberal observant” Jewish prayer group in the U.S. to reveal divergent views about cultural narratives of personal choice in religious identity and practice. The second paper draws on a Canadian survey and personal interviews to show how the term “religion” has become coded as anti-modern, unfree, American, and colonial since the 1960s. The third paper analyzes data from the World Values Survey to show that, while religiosity is generally associated with patriarchy, in some national contexts liberal gender ideologies are positively associated with religiosity. The fourth paper uses archival material and interviews to investigate how the U.S. federal government hires and trains chaplains for service in federal organizations where chaplaincy roles are mandated.
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Theme: Global Circulations of Asian Catholics and the Making of 21st Century Catholicism
Tuesday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM (In Person)
This session explores ways through which Asian Catholics directly participate in or indirectly intersect with the making of global Catholicism. Based on anthropological and sociological approaches, presenters explore issues located at the intersection of Asian Catholic migrations, religious practices, public engagement, and ethnic identities. They investigate the ways Asian Catholics are not limited to their local or national belongings – nor to a static, universal, and homogenous expression of their religious belonging. Rather, presenters shed light on the various modes through which Asian Catholics, their religious symbols, or their political awareness circulate and evolve across borders. Ultimately, the session reveals that Asian Catholic circulations that occur at different levels and through various modalities question how Catholics perceive themselves and enact a “global” Catholic economy that shapes the many locales of 21st century Catholicism.
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