Alabama Governor Robert Bentley spent his first day in office finding out how Christian an elected official can get before causing a scandal.
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Announcements, events, and opportunities related to topics of interest to TIF readers are posted here. Additionally you may find round-ups of news items and brief commentary on current events.
For a listing of all of the events announcements, click here.
For a listing of announcements regarding books, click here.
books
All Things Shining
by Jonathan VanAntwerpenSusan Neiman reviews All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, by philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly.
January 23, 2011
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Pushing the genocide button?
by Annie Hardison-MoodyIn a recent issue on Ethnography and Theology in the online multimedia journal Practical Matters, Dr. Todd Whitmore, of the University of Notre Dame, provides an analysis of a memo he received while conducting fieldwork among the Acholi people in Uganda. Whitmore’s analysis of the memo, which was dated from the 1980s and attributed to President Yoweri Museveni, finds that it implies “co-genocide on the Acholi people, first on the part of key figures of the NRM and then also on the part of the leadership of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).”
January 24, 2011
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Secularism despite itself
by Charles GelmanKile Jones, a Ph.D. student at the Claremont School of Theology, has a review of William Connolly's Why I Am Not a Secularist up at State of Formation, in which he "argue[s] why some of [Connolly's] key positions are admirable, but that some of the conclusions he draws from them are not."
January 25, 2011
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Call for papers: Spirituality, political engagement, and public life
by John D. BoyThe SSRC Working Group on Spritituality, Political Engagement & Public Life is inviting submissions of abstracts for a conference to be held at Columbia University in New York City, June 3-4, 2011. Submissions are due by March 1, when they will be reviewed by members of the working group co-chaired by Courtney Bender and Omar McRoberts. The conference, like the working group, will engage with a set of overarching themes: "the institutions and traditions that construct, condition, and demarcate spiritual activities and identities" and "the relations of these institutions and traditions to systems and patterns of political participation in the contemporary United States."
January 25, 2011
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Debating religion and media
by John D. BoyThe latest issue of Social Anthropology (sub. req.) contains a debate on religion and media between Charles Hirschkind and Matthew Engelke. Additionally, it features articles on religion and media by Birgit Meyer, Patrick Eisenlohr and Martijn Oosterbaan.
January 26, 2011
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David Sehat: the moral establishment of American Protestantism
by Richard AmesburyDavid Sehat talks about his new book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, in a two-part interview with Paul Harvey on the Religion in American History blog.
January 27, 2011
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Rhetoric and authority
by Jonathan VanAntwerpenAt Notes from the Social Field, Ernesto Castañeda reflects on President Obama's rhetorical performance in the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson.
January 27, 2011
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Will the Arab revolutions spread?
by Jonathan VanAntwerpenMarc Lynch responds to protests across the Arab world.
January 27, 2011
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Secularism and race
by John D. BoyThe Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London is hosting a one-day conference today on "Secularism, Racism, and the Politics of Belonging," bringing together an international group of scholars on race, religion, and public policy as well as activists.
January 28, 2011