“Religion is back”, “the resurgence of religion”, “God is not dead”, “post-secular societies”, “return of religion”; refrains attempting to describe and interpret the role and of religion in contemporary societies abound. The persistence and renewed presence of religion in the public sphere has rightfully become one of the most pressing issues calling for not only investigation and explanation but also for revisiting old theories about religion, modernity (and post-modernity) and public and private.

Casanova’s widely read and cited book, Public Religions in the modern world from 1994 has played a prominent role in forming ideas about religion in the public sphere, but has also received a good amount of criticism, in particular for its embeddedness in specific westerns (or even specific American) conceptions of religion, state and civil society. Casanova’s concept of deprivatisation may also be criticized in terms of its utility to work as a framework for empirical research attempting to gauge the presence and salience of religion in public spheres.

Call for Papers

On March 5th 2012, CESAU (Centre for Sociological Studies) and CSR (Centre of Contemporary Religion) are co-hosting a workshop on methods, approaches and findings in relation to public religion. The workshop will be organized around a presentation by Linda Woodhead, Director of the British Religion and Society Programme, focusing on a model for studying public religion but will also include other papers on public religion. We hereby invite papers addressing the question of religion in the public sphere.

Scholars wishing to present a paper must send an abstract to Henrik Reintoft Christensen (HC@teo.au.dk).

Linda Woodhead is professor in sociology of religion, Department of Politics, Philosophy & Religion at Lancaster University, and Director of the British Religion and Society Programme. Linda Woodhead is associated to Department of Culture and Society as adjunct professor in the period 2009-2014.

Programme

2:00-3:15pm    Lecture by prof. Linda Woodhead

3:15-3:30pm    Coffee break

3:30-5:00pm    Paper Presentations