Essays

"Much has changed since this essay was published in 2008—much scary and depressing, but some—thank goodness—hopeful." In this update, Roger S. Gottlieb reflects on what has changed since this essay...

I argue that shifting assumptions about “authentic Islam” have catalyzed the scandalization of mystical music in Pakistan. The emergence of Arabization, with its emphasis on rediscovering true Islam in Arab...

The important story here is not about the president’s religion. Indeed, talk of the church is in many ways a distraction. While there are real reasons to be concerned about...

Religious leftists in Brazil—of all faiths, with Catholics most prominent among them—already lean on established institutions in combination with the popular culture and traditions of their country.

I joined Restoring Eden as a participant observer in 2016, soon after they carried out a series of citizen science projects in the rural, white coalfields of Central Appalachia. As...

Climate strikes are rites of mourning the future, lamenting current catastrophes, and demanding world leaders to radically reduce carbon emissions. The bodies of young people acting together on rural lands,...

With extraterritorial, extrajudicial assassination normalized, and law’s foundational protection of human life selectively discarded, we are witnessing the unfolding of a new law.

In religious studies . . . our students learn non-knowing not by thinking their way to it, but by actually not knowing, up to and including a profound unknowing about...

While phrases such as “Brazil first,” “America first,” or “Brexit is Brexit” may suggest a will to restore sovereignty around the logic of positionality—of what stands before and above—they operate...

Elections do many things, but one thing they are supposed to do is make a people’s opinion known. One group of important actors within Thailand who cannot express their sovereign...

Throughout my research, I encountered many stories like Cûifā́gàui’s, in which Native people struggled as traditional formats for accessing sacred power were foreclosed by ecological disaster and colonial violence.

Americans have long sacralized ordinary objects through memory work that reveals the power of the state, that transforms otherwise familiar, even banal, objects into the ties that bind daily life...