The Religions and Public Life initiative’s new graduate seminar and a public lecture series next spring are highlighted in a Duke Today article. Both the course and speaker series will bring together scholars in different disciplines from Duke and abroad.
“Religion and Development”
Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, will be speaking March 5th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Marshall has worked for over three decades on international development, with a focus on issues facing the world’s poorest countries. She is also currently a Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her long career with the World Bank (1971-2006) involved a wide range of leadership assignments, many focused on Africa. From 2000-2006 her mandate covered ethics, values, and faith in development work, as counselor to the World Bank’s President. She led the Bank’s work on social policy and governance during the East Asia crisis years. Marshall has been closely engaged in the creation and development of the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) and is its Executive Director. She serves on the Boards of several NGOs and advisory groups, including AVINA Americas, the Niwano Peace Prize International Selection Committee, and the Opus Prize Foundation.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
March 5, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014
“Pentecostalism, Poverty, and Power”
Ruth Marshall, Assistant Professor in the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, will be speaking February 26th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Marshall’s academic interests include religion and politics, African politics and post-colonial theory, political philosophy, transnational religion, and Pentecostalism. Her research focuses on Africa, especially West Africa, with a focus on transnational religion, war and violence, youth militias, citizenship, ethno-nationalism, autochthony, and international interventionism. Some of her publications include “Prospérité Miraculeuse: Les pasteurs pentecôtistes et l’argent de Dieu au Nigéria”; “Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism”; and “‘God is not a Democrat’: Pentecostalism and Democratisation in Nigeria” in Paul Gifford (ed.) The Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
February 26, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014
“Post-secularization, Globalization, and Poverty”
José Casanova, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and head of the Berkley Center’s Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular, will be speaking Tuesday, February 12th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Casanova is one of the world’s top scholars in the sociology of religion. He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of life-long achievement in the field of theology.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
February 19, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014
“Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Globalization”
Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, will be speaking Tuesday, February 12th at 11:30 am as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Cardinal Francis George is the first Chicago native to become Archbishop of Chicago. He is the thirteenth Ordinary of Chicago since its establishment as a diocese in 1843. The northwest side native, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is the sixth Cardinal to lead the Chicago Archdiocese’s 2.3 million Catholics. He has assumed a prominent position among U.S. bishops, serving as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010. His pastoral leadership encompasses international and national audiences.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
February 12, 11:30 am
The Duke Islamic Studies Center, ISLAMiCommentary, KIE, the Religion Department, and the Center for Muslim Life will be hosting a talk by Dr. Robert P. Jones, founding CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a leading scholar and commentator on religion, values, and public life.
Dr. Jones writes a weekly “Figuring Faith” column at the Washington Post’s On Faith section. Dr. Jones serves on the national steering committees for both the Religion and Politics Section and the Religion and the Social Sciences Section at the American Academy of Religion and is a member of the editorial board for “Politics and Religion,” a journal of the American Political Science Association. He is also an active member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Society of Christian Ethics, and the American Association of Public Opinion Research. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University, where he specialized in sociology of religion, politics, and religious ethics. He also holds a M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Before founding PRRI, Dr. Jones worked as a consultant and senior research fellow at several think tanks in Washington, DC, and was assistant professor of religious studies at Missouri State University. Dr. Jones is frequently featured in major national media such as CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, and others. Dr. Jones’ two books are Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life and Liberalism’s Troubled Search for Equality.
Religious Minorities in America: Islam in Context
Thursday, January 24
4:00PM – 5:30PM
John Hope Franklin Center 240
Flooding the Desert: Religious-Based Mobilizing to Save Lives Along the Sonora-Arizona Border
Kraig Beyerlein, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame University, will be speaking November 26th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.
The talk will address the nature and origins of congregation-based support for humanitarian aid in the desert and the different models of congregation-based activism. Additionally, he will explore why some congregations resist supporting/participating in the humanitarian aid movement, and the consequences of congregation-based humanitarian service for activists, especially non-religious participants.
Beyerlein teaches and engages in research in the areas of collective behavior/social movements, civic engagement/volunteerism, social networks, and the sociology of religion, especially congregation-based mobilization. He has published articles on these topics in such journals as the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Mobilization, Social Forces, and Social Problems. Before coming to Notre Dame in the fall of 2009, he spent three years in the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona as an assistant professor. He received his Ph.D in 2006 from the Sociology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
As part of the new Religions and Public Life initiative, a new graduate-level seminar is being offered jointly by the Divinity School, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Titled “A paradoxical politics? Religions, poverty and the re-imagining of citizenship within a globalizing world,” the course will meet Tuesdays from 5:30-8:00 pm, and will include discussion leaders from among Duke faculty as well as Jose Casanova, Georgetown University; Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Archbishop of Chicago; Susan Holman, Harvard University; Ruth Marshall, University of Toronto; and Peter van der Veer, Max Planck Institute. For more information, download the course flyer or see the course description below:
A Paradoxical Politics? Religions, Poverty, & Re-Imagining Citizenship in a Globalizing World {REL 999.08, XTIANTHE 840}
Spring 2013; Tuesdays 5:30-8:00pm
This interdisciplinary graduate seminar examines the paradoxes in the public sphere when faith, citizenship and poverty intersect with the myriad processes of globalization. What is the shape, purpose and configuration of the public sphere in regional, national and international contexts that issue forth from the points where these intersect?
Faith-based grassroots movements address poverty and inequality and in the process are involved in the renewal of citizenship by democratic means. Examples include the role of Islamic parties in the Arab Spring, Pentecostalism in creating islands of social care in the favelas of Brazil, to millions raised for humanitarian aid and development by Evangelical groups, and the resort to religious discourses of jubilee and usury in addressing the deleterious impact of financialised debt. Paradoxically, religious groups are also charged with exacerbating conditions that produce poverty and inequality. Here we think especially of women, authoritarian institutions, indigenous peoples and the fallout of contesting visions of public life whether secular, religious or plural.
Understanding the paradoxes produced by the intersection of faith, politics and economics is a crucial yet neglected dimension to negotiating the impact of globalisation locally, regionally and internationally on a wide range of issues such as public health, the environment, welfare provision, schooling, development aid, immigration, urban regeneration and security.
In an opinion piece for ABC, Australia’s national broadcasting network, Luke Bretherton observes a surprising trend among American Christians debating whether to exercise their right to vote. He ascribes this phenomenon partly to the polarization of the public through the politics of commodification and also due to the Republican focus on individuality over society.
The Immanent Frame, a blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere run by the Social Sciences Research Council, recently asked a handful of scholars from across the nation to sound off on the impact of hurricane Sandy to the presidential campaigns. Ebrahim Moosa sees the president’s deployment of troops to help with relief efforts as a turn to the proverbial “swords into ploughshares.”