[In] this essay we briefly elaborate upon the topics we covered in our [JAAR] article to outline promising areas for…
study of religion
Reparative capitalism
What would it mean to sever philanthropy—affectively, politically—from reciprocal obligation? What would it look like to enact politics on a…
Revisited: Sex abuse and the study of religion
In summer 2010, Robert Orsi, Terence McKiernan, and I began a conversation about the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.…
Cold stones
Stone appears as an intuitive approach to ordering the world. It is a basic touchpoint that we return to. When…
Three approaches to the study of religion
Is religion a valid category of scholarly inquiry? In this post, I briefly set out three distinct approaches to the…
Secularism and secularity at the AAR
At the upcoming annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, to be held November 23-26 in Baltimore, a new program unit on “Secularism…
What does spirituality mean in America today?
But why, first of all, is this subject a significant one? And why does it appear especially pertinent at precisely…
Encountering the archive
Where on earth to begin with the rich but deeply disturbing material presented to us on BishopAccountability.org? (For an example,…
Sister Martin Ignatius explains not very much at all for you
Ever since I was first asked to offer reflections on the study of religion and the Catholic sex abuse crisis, it…
The church, the state, and the child
The child, as the psychoanalytic theorist Adam Phillips points out, “remains our most convincing essentialism.” By this he means that at…