Peter Lehman He seemed to be defined by an absence, which then materialized as a dark, quiet persona who always kept his eyes covered in public, inviting people to project their thoughts, fears and melancholy onto him.
The Ghost of Roy Orbison Goes on Tour
Watering the Roots of Mormonism: The Erie Canal’s Contribution to the Faith
S. Brent Plate Religious groups took various routes out of the area, often seeking ever greener pastures to the west. Many groups that began along the canal, like the Mormons, Spiritualists, and Adventists, spread to remote corners of the globe.
Humor is Not Just Entertainment: 7 Questions for David Feltmate
David Feltmate Popular culture scholarship is actually quite difficult, but people seem to think it is easy. It is not enough to just watch TV or listen to music, you really have to dig into the significance of the material and its social importance.
America’s 10 Commandments: 7 Questions for Jenna Weissman Joselit
Jenna Weissman Joselit No other country made, or continues to make, as much of them as America does.
Religion on Display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Judith Weisenfeld Fortunately, visitors will encounter aspects of African-American religious life in unexpected places throughout the exhibits that give a broader sense of the places and people involved in this history.
7 Questions for Elizabeth Drescher
Elizabeth Drescher . . . what constitutes “religion” and the “spiritual” for most people often has little in common with what scholars study and demographers track.
Bonnaroo Spirituality and Collective Effervescence
Scott Muir Bonnaroovians overwhelmingly endorse the notion that the festival is a sacred collective experience.
Yee-haw! Guns and Civil Religion in Texas
William B. Parsons Which brings us to guns. There are many, many reasons why campus carry is a bad idea.
Seven Questions for Erin A. Smith: What Would Jesus Read?
Erin A. Smith I purposely excluded sacred scriptures from the study, because I wanted to investigate the messy relay between the commercial and the transcendent.
American Secularism: Seven Questions
In our interview series, “Seven Questions,” we ask some very smart people about what inspires them and how their latest work enhances our understanding of the sacred in cultural life. For this segment, we solicited responses from Joseph O. Baker and Buster G. Smith, co-authors of American Secularism: Cultural Contours of Nonreligious Belief Systems (New York University Press, 2015). 1. What sparked the idea for writing this book? In delving deeper into the sociology of religion as a subfield, we were struck by an interesting split in the discipline. On the one hand you have numerous classic texts on theory, […]