What Hath Religious Studies To Do With Interreligious Dialogue?

When I moved to Germany, I was invited to take part in a pioneering project to map interreligious dialogue (IRD) efforts across the country.

In the aftermath of the 10th World Assembly of Religions for Peace in Lindau in August 2019, a group of colleagues got together to pursue the idea of an interreligious cartography in Germany. The goal was to make a comprehensive survey of local, national, and international interreligious initiatives and actors in German municipalities to serve as a reference for future research.

Through our investigation, we gained a clearer picture of what IRD looks like in Germany and who is taking part. From Bonn to Berlin, Flensburg to Freiburg, one of the things that became evident was that many of the local initiatives involved, or were led by, religion scholars and academic theologians. Based on my own research and experience, this holds true in the U.S. and elsewhere, with scholars often actively involved in IRD efforts at the local, regional, national, and international levels.

As I reflected on this, I pondered a few questions: Are religious studies and IRD natural companions or should they be carefully delineated and divided? Should those who study religion lead the way when it comes to multi-religious responses to the world’s pressing issues? Or, as some argue, should IRD remain an object for critical study and not participation?

Religion at the 2023 Academy Awards

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominations for the 95th Academy Awards in January, contenders included several movies with religion angles and numerous actors with faith backgrounds.

A short list for the ceremony, to be held March 12, 2023, includes the eco-spiritual themes of Avatar: The Way of Water, revivalist roots in the Elvis biopic starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, themes of “faith and fatness” in The Whale with Brendan Fraser, the Bible Belt cultural cues that are felt but never fully seen in To Leslie’s melancholic storyline, and confessions and questions of whether God cares about miniature donkeys in The Banshees of Inisherin.

That’s not even to mention Stranger at the Gate. Directed by Joshua Seftel, the film is about an Afghan refugee named Bibi Bahrami and the members of her Indiana mosque, who come face to face with a U.S. Marine who has secret plans to bomb their community center. That’s when the Marine's plan takes an unexpected turn. The moving real-life story is considered a favorite in the best documentary short film category.

Beyond awards season, 2023 has a slew of new religion-related releases sure to catch audiences’ attention.

It’s safe to say that if you head to the movies – or catch the Academy Awards ceremony – this year, you’re likely to run into religion. But what might we learn about religion and culture from this year’s many intersections between faith and film?

Religion in Your Face: Ash Wednesday and the Practice of Religious Facial Marking

Several years ago, when I was living in Houston, TX, a man walked up to me at a local café and kindly said, "Excuse me sir, you've...um...I think you have dirt on your face."

He was half right.

It wasn’t exactly dirt, but ashes. Ashes smudged on my forehead in the shape – if you looked at it just right and from a 43-degree angle – of a cross.

One could not blame the man for mistaking my visible marker of inward penance and outward allegiance to a particular strand of religiosity…for dirt.

These days, in places like H-town, you don’t see too many people wearing their religion on their face.

Nonetheless, later this month (February 22, 2023) millions of Christians across the world -- Catholic, Lutheran, Anglicans, others – will also don gray smudges on their brows to commemorate Ash Wednesday.

Traditionally viewed as the start of Lent – a 40-day penitential season of fasting and preparation preceding Easter – Ash Wednesday is most widely associated with the "imposition" or "infliction" of ashes on practitioners’ foreheads.

Christians, however, are not alone in marking their faces with religious symbols. There are traditions in India, New Zealand, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere that involve religious symbology born on foreheads, cheeks, and chins.

While such outward signs of devotion may seem an extreme in our seemingly secular age, more often than not, these religious facial markings tell us relatively little about the “inner religion” of the devotee and much more about spiritual symbols’ social function(s).

How do we love our neighbors

Christians, and specifically those of the evangelical variety, can sometimes struggle to form deep, meaningful relationships with the "religious Other."

Whether it’s a tendency to interpret these relationships through the lens of “evangelism” or a fear of diversity and difference, evangelical Christians have often been absent from the interreligious table.

I happen to come from a tradition that is particularly ecumenically-challenged. While the denomination has its historical reasons for not playing nice with the “religious Other,” the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) lacks a robust model for interreligious encounters and education in religious diversity.

This can often be confounding or frustrating for LCMS laity — and clergy — who encounter a wide range of religious expressions in their day-to-day life.

While I was in St. Louis, Missouri teaching a two-week intensive on cultural anthropology at Concordia Seminary, I got the chance to chat with Sarah Crowder about these issues.

Sarah is a high school theology teacher in Las Vegas and her students had some questions about the world’s religions and how to approach the topic.

Thanks to Sarah and her students, for the conversation!

The Past, Present, and Future of Religion

Every year, numerous pundits and forecasters offer their crystal-ball takes on financial futures, political potentials, and what they think will be the calendar-defining or epoch-making events in the year to come.

But what about religion?

As 2022 ended, I had the chance to look back on, and forward to, the year in religion.

Working with the Religion News Association (RNA) – a 73-year-old trade association for reporters who cover religion in the news media – I helped oversee a poll of its membership on the top religion stories over the previous year. Then, in my capacity as Editor for ReligionLink – a monthly resource for reporters writing on religion – I put together some predictions for the big religion news to come in 2023.

The two experiences gave me an opportunity to reflect on religion’s persistent and ubiquitous role in global events. They also underscored once more how a basic knowledge of religion is not so much about understanding worlds beyond, but the world we live in right now.

Spirit Tech is here to stay

In our house, we have a new laptop.

It’s shiny and new, with a fancy blue OLED touchscreen and widgets galore.

Perhaps you too — not long after “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” nor long before the festive, gift-giving season — will be purchasing new tech.

Maybe a new smartwatch? The latest video game console? How about a meditation headset from tech startup Muse?

Yep, you read that right. The Muse headband is a brain-sensing device that provides real-time neurofeedback during meditation sessions or, as the company promises, to help you focus, sleep, or otherwise reach peak performance.

It is one of many technological innovations promising to trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experiences and deliver more peace and progress in the process.

From brain stimulation to synthetic psychedelics, new spiritual movements in Silicon Valley to the everyday ways technology is used in worship and devotion technology is changing the way we do religion.

This is what researchers Kate Stockly and Wesley Wildman of Boston University’s Center for Mind and Culture call “spirit tech.”

Not only do they believe “spirit tech” is here to stay, they also suggest it has the potential to heal our relationship with technology and radically alter the way we think and pray.

Recently, I had the opportunity to dive deeper into the world of “spirit tech,” writing two pieces to help you explore the wide world of religious technologies, their meaning, and their potential futures.

Oppression or Liberation? Sweating Over Modest Clothing

Sitting with Soraya under the shade of a palm tree along Balneario del Escambrón’s sun-soaked sand in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I could barely stand the heat.

It was 88° F (31° C) with high humidity. Sweat was pouring down my face as I listened to her talk about her experience as a Puerto Rican convert to Islam.

Amidst the discussion, she noticed my perspiration and laughed. “Hermano, you think you’re hot?! Imagine being dressed in a black abaya [loose over garment] and hijab!”

Bringing the topic up, I asked her why she chose to wear hijab — or Islamic headscarf. Soraya replied, “before I became Muslim, men were always judging my body by its curves, by how tight my clothes were and how round I was in certain places. Wearing abaya donning the hijab, takes those evaluations out of the conversation and forces people to take me for who I actually am, what I say, what I do — not what I wear.”

Even so, Soraya still gets stopped on San Juan’s streets and asked about her clothing, her religion, or whether she feels “oppressed.”

For many, the “controversial fabric” is a symbol of subjugation and segregation. Especially right now, as protests continue to rage in Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Ahmini who was killed while resisting the country’s compulsory laws forcing women to wear hijab, the headscarf has once again become a trademark of tyranny and functional emblem of fundamentalist religion.

And yet, for millions of religious women, headscarves, veils, and others forms of conservative clothing remain a prized tradition, a fashion statement, or — as with Soraya — a means of liberation.

In my latest piece with Patheos, I explore the material contexts and colonial pasts that are imperative to keep in mind when discussing hijabs, veils, and other forms of modest, religious dress.

The Theme is Religion, James Bond Religion

When you think of James Bond, you probably don’t reckon with whether or not the super spy is religious or if spirituality plays a major role in his action-filled escapades.

But if you look for it, religion is everywhere in James Bond:

• In the novel You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming casts James Bond in the role of a savior, prophesied by Shinto priests and embodying the saintly personage of the Catholic, dragon-slaying hero St. George.

• Live and Let Die — both the book and movie — heavily feature vodou and obeah, with a 007-emblazoned, customized tarot card deck specifically designed for the film.

• There is a “priest hole” and chapel on Bond’s family Scotland estate in the movie “Skyfall” (2012).

• Bond battles with a man dressed as a Nio guardian statue in the film, “The Man with the Golden Gun” and traipses through Cairo, Egypt’s Ibn Talun mosque in “The Spy Who Loved Me.”

• In 2015’s “Spectre,” Bond replies to his love interest Dr. Madeleine Swann's question, "Why does a man choose the life of an assassin?" with, "Well, it was that or the priesthood."

The list could go on, but suffice it to say: James Bond has a long and complicated relationship with religion.

On the occasion of the 60th-anniversary of the world premiere of the first James Bond film Dr. No in 1962 (October 5, 2022), I take a look at religion in the Bond universe and consider what we might have to learn about religion — and the world-famous super spy — in the process.

But wait...is it a cult?

When I first moved to New Zealand to work with a Lutheran parish in Palmerston North, I came across some FAQs – frequently asked question – on the national church body’s website.

Along with the usual queries, I found one peculiar bullet point. It asked: are Lutherans a cult?

Granted, Lutherans can be strange people. With their penchant for sneaking carrots into Jell-O salads and an often-disconcerting fealty to European heritages, Lutherans are anything but normal.

But rarely, if ever, had I heard them called a “cult.”

Numerous communities and religious bodies have been labeled with the pejorative term over the years. From Jonestown to Aum Shinrikyo, the Manson Family to Raëlism, the Church of Scientology to Heaven’s Gate, the Branch Davidians to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and yes, Lutherans – all of these, at some point in time, have been labelled a “cult.”

Which is not a term you want used for your community.

Why? Because it immediately suggests things like brainwashing, mass suicide, and crazy-haired white dudes stockpiling women, weapons, and weed in the backwoods.

Therein lies the problem.

When we hear the term “cult” we already think we know everything there is to know about that group. They’re dangerous. They’re deviant. They don’t deserve to be called a “real” religion.

But if we take a moment to double-click on the term and expand on what it means from a social perspective, we might find that the word "cult" – or "religion" for that matter – doesn’t mean what we think it means.

On a Wing and a Prayer

Amid the hustle-and-bustle of checking in, making your way through the obstacle course that is security, and divining where your gate is, you might not have time to grab a bite to eat or sneak in a quick massage, let alone have time to settle yourself for prayer.

But, across the U.S. — and throughout the world — airport chapels, prayer rooms, and interfaith spaces offer travelers an opportunity to do just that: to meditate, catch a few moments of quiet contemplation, or perhaps beseech the travel gods for a bit of mercy when flights are canceled, or luggage lost.

According to sociologist Wendy Cadge,  airport chapels had their genesis in the daily devotional needs of Catholic staff working in the airline business. She wrote of how initially, airport chapels “were established by Catholic leaders in the 1950s and 1960s to make sure their parishioners could attend mass.” The very first was Our Lady of the Airways at Boston’s Logan airport, built in 1951. 

Today, major transit hubs across the world offer some sort of spiritual respite for the busy traveler.

Pew Research Center found  that more than half of the U.S.’s large hub airports (catering to 1% or more of annual air passengers) offer a chapel or interfaith prayer room of some sort. These include standouts like San Diego’s meditation room “The Spirit of Silence,”  Orlando’s former, centrally located prayer room,  San Juan, Puerto Rico’s decidedly Catholic chapel,  or John F. Kennedy Airport’s synagogue,  the only one of its kind in the Americas.

Internationally, you can find stunning examples like the Buddhist meditation space at Taiwan’s Taoyuan Airport,  Berlin’s Room of Stillness  and its formidable fire-brick interior façade, or the new Istanbul airport’s ecologically-certified Ali Kuşçu mosque,  which can fit up to 6,230 people for prayer.

Far from cheaply-packaged single-serving spirituality or simply a security threat,  airport chapels, prayer rooms, and interfaith spaces offer a chance to reflect on how we define religion, both at home and abroad. Their persistent popularity, and their place in our religious imagination, exhibit the pluralism, plasticity, and politics that typify global religion today.

Visiting Every. Church. In. Berlin.

When Berliners Piet and Ulrike Jonas travel abroad, they head into local churches to gawk at stained glass windows, ponder over ornate altar pieces, and discern the meaning of devotional art.

“It is a way for us to get to know the place,” said Piet, “to begin to understand its history and the people who lived there.”

With church visits featuring so prominently in their vacations, Piet and Ulrike wondered if they might start doing the same in their home city.

And so, one-by-one, they began to look in on Berlin’s churches. What started as a hobby quickly turned into a goal-oriented project: to visit every church in Berlin.

Alle Kirchen Berlins was born.

According to their website, their project is simple. “We want to see all the churches in Berlin from the inside,” they wrote. According to their count, that means visiting some 450 locations. As of January 2022, they were at number 381.

The project, however, is not explicitly religious in nature. Nor is it specifically historical, architectural, or social. Instead, Piet and Ulrike said it’s about getting to know Berlin.

Along the way, they are encountering the city’s diversity and development, it’s eclecticism and surprising spiritual effervescence.

“One would not think that Berlin is an especially religious city,” said Ulrike, “and yet we are finding out just how important religion has been and still is.

More than showcasing some of the most remarkable, interesting, or site-seeable places of worship, Alle Kirchen Berlins provides insight into how we understand and negotiate what counts as religion. Moreover, the project highlights how our encounter with religion is part of the way in which contemporary societies — and cities — organize and understand themselves.

Specifically, Piet and Ulrike’s project highlights how city dwellers determine what counts as sacred and secular, how immigration has long been a part of shaping urban religious expressions, and how the notion of religion and the notion of a city are entangled with one another, the one shaping the other and vice versa.

Going Hungry for God: Why Do People Fast?

“I wonder what it would be like to fast in Siberia,” my friend Mohammed asked.

Mohammed had always enjoyed Ramadan in the company of family and friends in Jordan — a Muslim-majority country in the Middle East. He was curious what it might be like to fast in places where Muslims were in the minority or where daylight hours extended late into the night, extending the fasting period beyond the limits he was used to.

According to Islamic tradition, fasting is required during Ramadan, the ninth month of its lunar calendar. In 2022, Ramadan is likely to start on April 2. For thirty days, those fasting are obligated to abstain from drinking, eating, or engaging in other indulgent activities (like sex, smoking, and activities considered sinful) from just before sunrise to sunset. Depending upon where you are in the world, that can mean fasting 10 or up-to-21 hours. It was the idea of fasting for such a potentially long time that prompted Mohammed’s ponderous question about fasting in Siberia.

Muslims are far from the only religious actors who fast. Bahá’ís fast during daylight hours during the first three weeks of March in preparation for the Naw-Rúz Festival. As this post goes to press, Christians the world over are still in the midst of their Lenten fasts and looking forward to Easter. Jews fast as part of Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — as a means of repentance and solemn preparation. Some Hindus regularly practice fasting as a means of willful detachment and devotion.

With such a wide range of similar aesthetic practices, one might wonder: why do so many different religious people choose to go hungry for god?

What is "Religion" Anyway?

In 2013, the Disciples of the New Dawn started posting highly offensive memes on Facebook. They attacked everyone from Pagans and steampunk fans to women who had C-sections.

Tapping into fears about religious fundamentalism and public obsession with “cults,” their vitriolic posts went viral.

As the posts were shared with increasing frequency, some started to wonder whether Disciples of the New Dawn were a real religious community or just a cabal of internet trolls goading us into digital outrage (it turns out, they were the latter).

When I teach courses on religious studies, I like to use the case of the Disciples of the New Dawn as an opportunity for students to wrestle with the concept of religion itself. It prompts them to consider questions like: what makes a religion real? Or, what makes a religion ”religious” at all?

While we may feel like “we know religion when we see it,” we generally struggle to be exact when it comes to determining what counts as religion. Even if we have a vague idea, defining religion feels like pinning jello to a wall.

Which makes things difficult. Because, before can begin to dig deeper into the topic of religion, we first have to define the object of our study.

So, what is this thing we call “religion” anyway?

What you missed without religion class...

Odds are, you never took a “religious studies” class. 

If you did, it was probably a confessional course on a particular faith tradition. Maybe it was a unit in your high school’s social studies curriculum. At best, you took a “world religions” survey at college. 

Despite their benefits, none of these gave you the right tools to study religion. 

Which is weird, when you think about it. 

Because “religion is arguably the most powerful and pervasive force in the world.”

When I studied religion at the University of Florida, I learned that knowing something about religion helps us understand heaps about the world. Religious studies is about more than studying individual religions, but how religion functions as part of politics, science, economics, and society at large. 

As a scholar, newswriter, and wayward pastor, I’ve come to appreciate religious studies even more. I believe a basic literacy in “religion as part of the human experience” is key to having informed perspectives on modern life. 

In other words, I think you missed a lot without religion class. 

“What You Missed Without Religion Class” is here to help, demystifying the study of religion and discussing religion’s role in contemporary society.

The Little-Known Jewish History in the Heart of Germany

Berkach lies in the bucolic borderlands between the German states of Bavaria and Thuringia. Formerly divided by the hard boundary between former East (GDR) and West Germany, the one-time international frontier is now marked by an old watch tower, about a half mile outside the village.

But I’m not in Berkach today to chronicle its accounts of living on the fringes of the former GDR. Instead, I’m here to discover another significant aspect of the hamlet’s history, its once robust and significant Jewish life. 

As Germany looks back on 1,700 years of Jewish life in the country, dating back to a decree in Cologne in 321 they are recalling Judaism’s long, if complicated, history in central Europe. 

Visiting sites like Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin or renowned Jewish museums in Frankfurt, Berlin, or Munich, one gets a sense of the enormity of what was lost in the Holocaust — in human lives, in culture, in knowledge, in history and heart. 

Yet, despite the ways each institution seeks to personalize the ambivalence of German Jewish life over the years, there is an intimacy and immediacy that is missed if those are the only places one goes. 

To get a sense of the absent presence that Germany continues to wrestle with, one must also explore smaller, provincial places like Berkach. 

Insta to World Religions Launches Tuesday 1/23!

In an op-ed written for the Orange Country Register right before the holiday season, Joel Kotkin — the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University — wrote that, “it is hard to deny that we live in an increasingly post-religious civilization.”

While he admits that there are emerging alternative, non-institutional, forms of religion and spirituality and decries the dangers of the potent religion-plus-politics mix, his argument is an old one — that traditional religions are in terminal decline in the industrialized world. 

He couldn’t be more wrong. 

Religion has always been with us. And it still is. 

Throughout history, it has expressed the deepest questions human beings can ask, and it has taken a central place in the lives of virtually all civilizations and cultures. As we think all the way back to the dawn of human consciousness, we find religion everywhere we turn. And it hasn’t gone away. 

In the spirit of understanding religion — what it is, why it is, where it is, how it develops, changes, and shapes our world even as it is shaped by it — I am launching a new, public, platform for religious literacy: INSTA TO WORLD RELIGIONS. 

If you’re interested in learning more about religion, curious about various religious traditions, or just like pretty pictures, videos, and stories on Instagram this course is for you. 

The idea is to teach the equivalent of an introduction to world religions course via images, videos, stories and blogs and do so through Instagram.

I will kick off the course on Tuesday January 23rd! 

Each week, from Tuesday to Thursday, I will post photos, videos, stories, and blogs to explain the basic worldviews, rituals, material culture, and beliefs of Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Chinese, Japanese, Indigenous, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions as well as New Religious Movements and “religion beyond religion.” 

The course will also include an exploration of the very category of “what religion is” and dive into the social, political, and cultural elements that come into play in the development and understanding of the religions we are studying. It is my hope that our course will provide a way for you to not only learn more about other religions, but also engage with your own perspective and promote a posture of respectful curiosity and imaginative empathy toward learning more about religious traditions other than your own. 

I invite you to join me next Tuesday to start the course by talking more about WHY we should study religion in this day and age and how despite the overblown claims of some, religion is powerful and persistent, and shows no signs of disappearing. 

Is that a cult? - Things You Missed in Religion Class Episode 2.0

Jonestown. Aum Shinrikyo. The Manson Family. Raëlism. The Church of Scientology. Heaven’s Gate. The Branch Davidians. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka Mormon church). Lutherans. Are these cults? 

Or are they religions? Or are they sects? Or are they denominations? Or are they something else? 

Sometimes, people ask me, “Hey Ken, is that a cult?” Although the people asking usually have an answer in mind already it's an invitation to an important discussion on what we call a "cult" and what we call a "religion" and what the real differences are between them. 

Watch below and learn. Also, be sure to send your questions to Ken for the next video or tweet/post them using the hash-tag #MissedInReligion.