http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/ Religion and Society Rss Feed http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/spel_registration_open Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:57:53 +0000 You can now register for Sacred Practices of Everyday Life, 9-11 May 2012, Edinburgh http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/non_programme_events/show/denton_conference_implicit_religion Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:34:38 +0000 May 12-13 2012 (Fri 6 pm – Sun 2 pm) is the 35th annual conference on Implicit Religion, at Denton Hall, Ilkley, W. Yorks, UK http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/new_forms_of_public_religion_call_for_papers_now_open Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:50:54 +0000 Final Religion and Society conference, 5-7th September 2012, Cambridge http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/non_programme_events/show/science_religion_and_atheism Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:23:18 +0000 Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, Friday 30th March – Sunday 1st April 2012 http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/free_medieval_organ_event Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:24:44 +0000 10th-12th February at Bangor Cathedral http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/voices_and_organs_before_the_reformation Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:18:08 +0000 10-12th February, Bangor Cathedral http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/non_programme_events/show/youth_and_policy_conference Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:17:01 +0000 Thursday March 15th 2012, YMCA George Williams College, Canning, Town London http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/publications/podcasts/show/sarah_johnsen_case_study_6_the_role_of_faith_based_organizations_in_service_provision_for_homeles Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:34:39 +0000 In Religion and Change in Modern Britain (published Feb 2012 by Routledge), the chapters are interspersed by shorter contributions bringing themes to life through particular case studies. In this podcast, Norman Winter is in conversation with Dr Sarah Johnsen, the author of one of those case studies. Sarah Johnsen is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Housing, Urban and Real Estate Research at the School of the Built Environment at Heriot-Watt University. She led a team who conducted research on the role of faith-based organisations in service provision for homeless people. This study investigated the practices and perceptions of faith-based and secular initiatives. There has been suspicion voiced in some quarters that quality standards might be less consistent in the faith-motivated sector, and concern expressed that the faith-dimension might intrude inappropriately into their work. Sarah Johnsen talks about how the study was conducted in Manchester and London, where a range of faith organisations are engaged in provision of services. The study found that homeless people often find it difficult to tell the difference between faith-based and secular services, and little evidence that they were concerned by the faith background of the services they were offered. The research showed that most small organisations providing basic soup runs and night shelters are faith-based. They often offer assistance with no requirements being placed upon the recipients, which some critics argue contributes to keeping vulnerable homeless people in positions of high risk. The team described this approach as “non-interventionist”. More “interventionist” approaches, often practised by larger organisations offering specialist services such as high support hostels, aim to address the specific needs of individuals to enable them to move into more secure accommodation. In doing so they impose conditions on recipients, for instance with regard to addressing drug dependency. Fewer faith-based organisations are engaged in interventionist provision. The study showed, Sarah Johnsen says, that there is no apparent foundation for concerns that faith-based homelessness organisations misuse their position to promote religion when supported by public funding. She does, however, draw attention to the debate around the effectiveness and value of the non-interventionist way in which many of them, based on their religious convictions, operate. This study was funded by Religion and Society (click here to read more). Duration: 21.21 Click here for the list of podcasts about the book. Podcasts compiled by Norman Winter.  http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/publications/podcasts/show/gordon_lynch_cultural_perspectives Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:25:31 +0000 “Cultural Perspectives” is Chapter 10 of Religion and Change in Modern Britain (published Feb 2012 by Routledge). In this podcast Norman Winter is in conversation with one of the joint authors of this chapter, Gordon Lynch. Gordon Lynch is the Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His present research interests focus on cultural aspects of religion, and contemporary understandings. He co-wrote this chapter with Callum Brown, Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the University of Dundee. Gordon Lynch talks first about what is meant by “culture”. His emphasis is on the way we feel and experience what is going on around us, and the structures in which that is expressed. Though culture certainly changes, we may be remarkably unaware of how culture affects us. “We never experience the social worlds or the natural worlds that we live in purely through their immediate form, we always interpret them through cultural systems of meanings.” Professor Lynch describes the way in which religion is caught up in cultural change. The period covered in this book, 1945 to the present, has seen deep and significant change. In particular the 1960s saw waves of liberalising legislation which diminished the dominance in society of inherited Christian values; the authors talk of “the loss of a normative Christian culture”. The whole period saw a “rise of non-religion”. In reaction we witnessed “the consolidation of conservative religious sub-cultures” in which those who continued to be religious distanced themselves more clearly from the values of society at large. The conversation moves on to consider the impact of cultural change on religion as a process which is continuing: technological innovation, material consumption and consumer choice, and emerging forms of social networking. Consequently the terminology surrounding what we know as “religion” is itself changing. He explains why the word “sacred” should be regarded as significant in understanding what has happened to religion in contemporary culture. The conversation concludes with a discussion on how faith itself, Christianity in particular in its theology and structures, has engaged with the changes in the Britain in which it finds itself today.  Gordon is Principal Investigator on Religion and Society-funded network Belief as cultural performance and collaborative studentship Negotiating the secular and the religious in higher education. Duration: 41.36 Click here for the list of podcasts about the book. Podcasts compiled by Norman Winter.  http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/publications/podcasts/show/adam_dinham_religion_and_welfare Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:12:34 +0000 Religion, Welfare and Education” is Chapter 8 of Religion and Change in Modern Britain (published Feb 2012 by Routledge). In this podcast Norman Winter is in conversation with one of the joint authors of this chapter, Adam Dinham. Dr Dinham is Reader in Religion and Society at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is also Director of the Faiths and Civil Society Unit. Goldsmiths is located in an inner-city area in south-east London and Adam Dinham spent some time in social work and community development in areas like this before embarking on his academic career. He co-wrote the chapter with Professor Robert Jackson of Warwick University, who concentrated on Education. In this chapter Adam Dinham describes the quite radical changes in religion’s rôle in British society over the last half-century and more. He represents the changes in religion’s contribution to welfare around three major turning points. He depicts the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948 as the beginning of a reduction and shift of religion’s contribution to welfare, which had previously been central and significant. He then talks of a period of “welfarism” which began to be replaced by a “mixed economy” of welfare provision after the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979. Her government’s policies were roundly criticised in the Church of England’s report “Faith in the City” in 1985. Faith-based social welfare gradually found a new place in this mixed economy, especially under the Labour government which followed. In the formation of the Coalition Government in 2010 Adam Dinham sees the third significant turning point, with talk of a “Big Society” accompanying a very deliberate reduction in the state’s control and oversight of welfare provision. In this conversation Adam Dinham expands on the chapter, discussing the prospects of a Big Society, how society’s perception of religion has shifted from it being “actor” to “provider”, and how from a social welfare perspective faith-based organisations are viewed as “social capital”. The conversation concludes with a brief look at the wider context of the USA and Europe, and whether they provide indications of what the future might hold. Adam leads Religion and Society-funded research network FaithXChange. Duration: 32.06 Click here for the list of podcasts about the book. Podcasts compiled by Norman Winter.   http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/publications/podcasts/show/shuruq_naguib_god_change Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:53:20 +0000 “God-change” is Chapter 5 of Religion and Change in Modern Britain (published Feb 2012 by Routledge). In this podcast Norman Winter is in conversation with one of the joint authors of this chapter, Shuruq Naguib. Dr Naguib describes the dominant strands in Islam in Britain, and how they have reacted to, and been re-shaped by, changes and events in British society over the past few decades. She believes British Islam is and will remain diverse, but at the same time has been transformed in a relatively short period. One significant new emerging feature is, she believes, the confidence Muslim women have found to re-establish their own voice and leadership. British Islam was for a while dominated by the traditions of South Asia from which many migrant families came. These already reflected an adaptation to modernity, but many Muslims were themselves unaware of that. In that initial period there was no significant polarisation between Islam and the values of British society. The meeting of traditions then became much wider with further immigration, with Muslims coming to Britain from other significant Islamic backgrounds. The insularity of the first mosques was challenged. Muslims activists then found themselves needing to find and create new alignments in order to respond to prejudice and suspicion. This then threw into sharper focus the variety of emphases on the sources of authority in the Quran and in tradition to which their traditions turned for guidance. No single expression of unity has proved possible. Neither Sunni nor Shi’a Islam has achieved this over 14 centuries, so British society must come to terms with the diversity inherent in Islam. Shuruq Naguib identifies significant new reforming trends. The authority of women as sources of truth is now being recognised in some quarters. Also the question which has featured prominently in the past, “Are you British or are you Muslim?” is by some being reinterpreted not as a polarising question regarding conflicting loyalties, but as a challenge which can be answered through integrating civic responsibilities with being truly Muslim. Click here for the list of podcasts about the book. Duration: 34.03 Podcasts compiled by Norman Winter.   http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/publications/podcasts/show/paul_weller_controversies_as_a_lens_on_change Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:34:17 +0000 “Controversies as a lens on change” is the title of the opening chapter of Religion and Change in Modern Britain (published Feb 2012 by Routledge). In this podcast Norman Winter is in conversation with one of the joint authors of this chapter, Paul Weller. Professor Weller (pictured in the centre) has worked in the field of inter-faith and multi-faith studies at the University of Derby for over 20 years. He is Principal Investigator on Religion and Society project Religion and Belief, Discrimination and Equality in England and Wales: Theory, Policy and Practice (2000-2010). The co-writer of this chapter was Malory Nye, the Principal of the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education in Dundee. In this chapter the authors view highly-publicised arguments and conflicts as markers of underlying trends, revealing the changing concerns about religion which have engaged the public from the Second World War to the present. Paul Weller talks about the changing nature of the media which has also contributed to how those conflicts and concerns have been portrayed, especially with the advent of new media which have brought new immediacy and interactivity. The chapter moves forward in time. In the early part of the period the Christian Church and its legacy were still dominant, and arguments often revolved around deviation from that tradition, for instance in the 1963 publication of “Honest to God”, or expressions of anxiety about cults and new religious movements. Debate and dispute regarding other major world faiths gradually gained prominence. In the 1970s, local residents in Hertfordsire opposed the establishment of a Hindu place of worship at Bhaktivedanta Manor.  Then in 1989, some time after its original publication, Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” sparked highly-publicised outrage among Muslims, with TV images of book-burning. This was fuelled further when the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, pronounced Rushdie to be an apostate, and a bounty was put upon his death. More recent controversies have revealed further conflicts between rights and freedoms, both within faiths and between religion and society as a whole. There have been public arguments about Islamic dress and Islamist teaching. The play “Behzti” (2004) and the BBC2 screening of “Jerry Springer the Opera” (2005) provoked strong movements of opposition. New legal protections and rights, for instance in services offered to gay couples, prompted conservative Christian opposition. The chapter also describes the political and media discussion of the “failure of multiculturalism”.  Duration: 40.51 Click here for the list of podcasts about the book. Podcasts compiled by Norman Winter.   http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/publications/podcasts/show/linda_woodhead_and_rebecca_catto_religion_and_change Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:27:32 +0000 Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto are the editors of Religion and Change in Modern Britain (published Feb 2012 by Routledge). In this podcast they are in conversation with Norman Winter. Linda Woodhead also wrote the Introduction and co-wrote Chapter 5 “God-change”. Rebecca Catto co-wrote the final chapter “The Religious and the Secular”. Professor Woodhead is Director of the Religion and Society Programme, and Dr Catto is the programme’s Research Associate. This podcast explores a central theme running through the book: the nature of religion in Britain has changed, and it remains significant in public life, contrary to the predictions made by many sociologists. They also discuss the multi-faceted approach which was used in addressing the wide range of themes embraced in the publication, including the principle of co-authorship behind each chapter. Duration: 22.20 Click here for the list of podcasts about the book. Podcasts compiled by Norman Winter.   http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/research_findings/featured_findings/religion_and_change_in_modern_britain_conversations_with_the_authors Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:08:49 +0000 Listen to podcasts with contributors to the book Religion and Change in Modern Britain edited by the Programme Director and Research Associate and featuring Religion and Society research. http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/new_look_rr_org Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:11:18 +0000 Radicalisationresearch.org has had a redesign. http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/baroness_neuberger_to_speak_in_religious_freedom_debate Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:09:56 +0000 Julia Neuberger will be speaking as part of the Westminster Faith Debates. http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/spirituality_podcasts_now_all_available Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:00:52 +0000 All the podcasts from the 'New Spiritualities' workshop held in May 2011 are now available to listen to directly on this website. http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/non_programme_events/show/spirituality_in_a_fragmented_world Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:09:30 +0000 Second International Conference of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality, Tuesday 15 May – Thursday 17 May 2012, Northampton UK. http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/non_programme_events/show/religion_civil_religion_and_the_common_good Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:33:44 +0000 International conference at London Metropolitan University 20-21 June 2012 featuring Religion Society award holder Jeremy Carrette and Jeff Haynes, amongst others. Submissions invited. http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/news/show/new_programme_director_podcast Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:51:01 +0000 Linda Woodhead looks ahead to 2012, the final year of the Religion and Society Programme.