In this episode of It’s Useful to Know, Dr. Wallace Best talks about the human labor that goes into producing religious experiences. Religious services and spaces don’t just happen, he argues. Humans make them by hand, by choosing music, setting tables, lighting candles, crafting timelines, and so on. Religion, then, is not only about what the divine does, but also about what humans do. 

In this episode of It's Useful to Know, Dr. Jack Tannous speaks about the understudied religious experience of "simple believers” in the medieval Middle East, most of whom were illiterate. While elite Christians and Muslims focused on reading and writing texts, simple believers experienced religion through their senses and community. Studying their religious experience, Dr. Tannous shows, helps us understand how fluid religious boundaries could be in this period. 

Associate Professor of Psychology Molly Crockett studies how people learn and make decisions in social situations. Their lab's recent work focuses on moral cognition -- how people decide whether to help or harm, punish or forgive, trust or condemn -- in the digital age. 

They will be interviewed by CCSR Graduate Student Fellow Enoch Kuo, whose research sits at the intersections of theology, political theory, and the history of science.

In this episode of the Spotlight on Culture, Society, and Religion series, Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. of Princeton University gives an overview of his recent book, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. According to Dr. Glaude, if we hope to address the roots of persistent and pervasive inequalities in society today, we must interrogate the stories about America's guilt and innocence that we, as a nation, have convinced ourselves to be true. 

Beth Singler is Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich in the Faculty of Theology. She explores the social, ethical, philosophical, and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. A social and digital anthropologist, Singler has also produced documentary films as part of her public scholarship. Dr. Singler will be interviewed by CCSR Visiting Fellow Suzanne van Geuns, whose research on the rightwing internet broadly examines the intellectual exchange between computational projects and the gendered or sexual imagination. 

What Western philosophical terms should be used to describe traditional Buddhist ethical reflection, and what is the value of using such terms? Charles Goodman and Amod Lele will explore this question through a discussion of the eighth-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva (Shantideva), known as the Dalai Lama’s favorite philosopher and arguably the most systematic ethical thinker in classical India. On Goodman’s influential interpretation, Śāntideva is best described as a utilitarian. Lele rejects this interpretation and claims, contra Goodman, that Śāntideva is better described as a eudaimonist. In this conversation, the two scholars will debate the merits of these respective interpretations.

Carolyn Chen's Work Pray Code reveals how tech giants are reshaping spirituality to serve their religion of peak productivity. Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life.

Carolyn Chen, a sociologist, is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on religion, spirituality, and work in the new economy, as well as Asian American religions. 

She is interviewed by CCSR Visiting Fellow, Lauren Kerby. 

What is work? Why do we do it? And what does it have to do with religion? Join CCSR Visiting Fellow Lauren Kerby to explore where Americans’ ideas about work come from (spoiler alert: race and gender are involved too). In this episode, review what deep stories are and how you can spot subtle, even invisible ways religion influences our society. Then get creative and start imagining new stories we can tell about how we want to live together.

What is work? Why do we do it? And what does it have to do with religion? Join CCSR Visiting Fellow Lauren Kerby to explore where Americans’ ideas about work come from (spoiler alert: race and gender are involved too). In this episode, discover how American welfare policy tries to regulate poor people in every aspect of life, from work to diet to sex, all under the white Protestant umbrella of “personal responsibility.”

What is work? Why do we do it? And what does it have to do with religion? Join CCSR Visiting Fellow Lauren Kerby to explore where Americans’ ideas about work come from (spoiler alert: race and gender are involved too). In this episode, learn about early efforts to “protect” women by curtailing their ability to make their own choices about work and motherhood, and how those efforts maintained white Christian supremacy in the United States.

What is work? Why do we do it? And what does it have to do with religion? Join CCSR Visiting Fellow Lauren Kerby to explore where Americans’ ideas about work come from (spoiler alert: race and gender are involved too). In this episode, learn how white Americans used their conviction that people should work–like them–to justify violence against Black and indigenous peoples. 

What is work? Why do we do it? And what does it have to do with religion? Join CCSR Visiting Fellow Lauren Kerby to explore where Americans’ ideas about work come from (spoiler alert: race and gender are involved too). In this episode, learn about the subtle, even invisible ways religion influences our society, and hear what the Puritans had to say about what happens to lazy children.

In this episode of the Spotlight on Culture, Society, and Religion series, Professor Martha Kaplan of Vassar College examines the different ways in which people in three societies— Fiji, Singapore, and the US—value drinking water differently and describes the role that cultural differences might play in the conservation of water. At a time of environmental uncertainty, Kaplan challenges us to examine our own attitudes to the water we drink and to become more informed and responsible consumers.

In this episode of the Spotlight on Culture, Society and Religion series, Dr. Anthea Butler of the University of Pennsylvania talks about her recent book, White Evangelical Racism. According to Dr. Butler, once we understand how racism has been at the core of conservative evangelical activism, we can better understand why white evangelicals have laid claim to morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian standards.

In this episode of the Spotlight on Culture, Society and Religion series, Dr. Derrick R. Spires of Cornell University talks about how citizenship can mean more than just voting. He looks at how Black Americans in the 19th century practiced citizenship in ways we can still learn from today.

In conversation with Kristine Wright, Jennifer Scheper Hughes considers the birth of Christianity in Mexico in the context of catastrophic disease. At the end of the sixteenth century, a deadly outbreak took almost two million lives and left the colonial church in ruins. In the aftermath, Spanish missionaries and Indigenous Catholic survivors asserted radically different visions for the future of the church in the Americas. In this counterhistory of Christian origins, Hughes shows how Indigenous survivors shaped and defined what is arguably the first and oldest Christian institution in the hemisphere.  

In North America today, philosophers are aware of and often respectful of non-canonical philosophical traditions, but still, Buddhist philosophical texts are taught almost exclusively in Religion departments. Perhaps the problem is partly one of translation.

The Vasubandhu Translation Group (VTG) has sought to create texts that can be dropped into a non-specialist’s philosophy course: This includes their recently-completed draft translation of the 5th century Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses and Exposition (Viṃśikāvṛtti). So, we’ve provided the draft to ten Philosophy professors and asked them each to provide their thoughts in response to the following question: “Can you imagine a place for a text like this in a philosophy curriculum?”

In this episode of It’s Useful to Know, Dr. Judith Weisenfeld talks about how the term “cult” describes power relations in a given social context – the ability to define religious insiders, to construct dangerous outsiders, and enforce social norms – that has often been racialized in U.S. history. Instead, in her own work, she uses the term “religio-racial” to describe movements in the early 20th century such as Father Divine’s Peace Mission and the Nation of Islam, which she explores in her award-winning book New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration (2017). 

In a conversation with Eziaku Nwokocha, Claudine Michel will discuss how Vodou is not simply a religious tradition, but also a philosophy, a cultural orientation, and an ethical code of being in the world. The discussion will also include reflections on how Vodou has served as a mode of resistance and offers visions for newly imagined futures using its radical pedagogy. 

In this episode of It’s Useful to Know, Dr. Seth Perry talks about the variety of religions present in the United States at the time of the nation’s founding and why it’s complicated to claim that the nation has Christian origins. He also shares some of his current research on religion in the early national period, and he explains the connection between national identity and the stories we tell about ourselves.

Comparative Indigeneities Among Native and Tibetan Peoples

Graduate student in English Ingrid Norton will interview Prof. Natalie Avalos about her work in comparative indigeneities exploring urban Indian and Tibetan refugee religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonial praxis. This event is part of CCSR's Religion and the Public Conversation series. The 2021-2022 theme is "Indigenous Traditions and Diaspora."

In this episode of It's Useful to Know, Dr. Sarah Rivett talks about how popular fictions about American history make some communities' experiences invisible, in this case indigenous communities. She also compares the symbolism of the Raven in Haida and Tlingit literature and Anglo-Christian literature.

In this episode of “It's Useful to Know,” Dr. Jenny Wiley Legath talks about how carrying concealed weapons becomes a religious practice for some Americans, particularly white evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. She also discusses how concealed carry practices differ for men and women and what it means to think of these practices as religious.

We’re excited to launch our first video series, “It’s Useful to Know,” in which Media Team members interview scholars about something they think the public ought to know. In this introduction, Dr. Jonathan Gold talks with Madeline Gambino about the inspiration for the series and what’s coming up.

CCSR’s Media Team provides students and scholars who work on religion a chance to learn and experiment with different forms of public engagement. We produce new resources and think together about the means and ends of public scholarship on religion. 

Princeton University graduate student Ipsita Dey will interview Professor Kaplan about the role that the study of culture and religion plays in her research on water studies. Professor Kaplan's forthcoming book is Water Cultures: Fiji, New York and Singapore.  

This event is part of CCSR's Religion and the Public Conversation series. The 2021-2022 theme for this series is "Indigenous and Diaspora Traditions."

Anthea Bulter, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, engages in conversation with Ph.D. Candidate William Stell.

How can the study of religion correct errors, raise new questions, and elevate the public discourse?

Professor Muhammad Qasim Zaman engages in conversation with doctoral candidate Rebecca Faulkner.

How can the study of religion correct errors, raise new questions, and elevate the public discourse?
In this conversation, Princeton Religion Professor Elaine Pagels and Rabbi Ari Lamm, CEO of Bnai Zion, discuss what Christians and Jews should know about their own histories in order to understand one another better.

Derrick Spires, Associate Professor of English at Cornell University, engages in conversation with Ph.D. Candidate Michael Baysa.

How can the study of religion correct errors, raise new questions, and elevate the public discourse?

Eddie Glaude, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in the Department of African American Studies,  engages in conversation with Ph.D. candidate Nyle Fort.

Daromir Rudnyckyj is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. His research addresses globalization, money, religion, development, finance, and the state.

David. W. Miller, Director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative interviewed Ann Fudge on the topic of “Giving as a Lifelong Habit.” 

Doll Lecture on Religion and Money given by Christian Smith, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.