Religion Archives | Contending Modernities

Abundant Religious Pluralism

Series: Symposium on Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Robert Orsi
May 30, 2025May 30, 2025

Santa Rosalia’s welcoming of the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu refugees . . . tells us that the gods, who have their own intentions in their relationships with humans, may be practitioners of decolonial love too.

Liberal Democracy and the Rise of the Pentecostal Pastor

Series: Symposium on Pastoral Power Clerical State

Karen Lauterbach
October 12, 2023January 24, 2024

What Obadare prompts us to ask is: What happens to a liberal democracy when the locus of power moves from the institutions of the state to the thrones of Pentecostal powers?

Taking a Critical Indigenous and Ethnic Studies Approach to Decolonizing Religious Studies

Series: Decoloniality and Liberation Theology

Natalie Avalos
October 14, 2020January 27, 2024

When we dehumanize Indigenous peoples at the level of epistemology, the endogenous study of Indigenous knowledge is rendered illegible. Even impossible.

The Provincializing Work, or What Remains After and Outside Philosophy of Religion

Series: Decolonizing Continental Philosophy of Religion

Danube Johnson
September 8, 2020January 25, 2024

Occlusions of colonial knowledge do not merely render accounts of modern subjectivity incomplete; they render them fantasies.

Introduction to Decoloniality and the Study of Religion

Series: Decoloniality and the Study of Religion

Garrett FitzGerald
February 24, 2020February 1, 2024

Decolonial thought unmasks the histories of violence that undergird Europe’s self-appointed status as the sole producer and purveyor of knowledge.

Without Literacy, There is No Wisdom: Reflections on Madrasa Discourses’ Summer Intensive in India

Mohammad Ali
September 30, 2019October 2, 2019

Muslim scholars should show courage to shoulder the accountability of the history they inherit and be ready to reinterpret parts of their tradition which are inconsistent with their modern experiences.

Harmonizing the Theology of the Past with the Realities of the Present

Series: Madrasa Discourses Summer Intensive 2018

Manzar Imam
February 21, 2019February 21, 2019

The task of answering the questions facing Islamic theology today cannot be met by those who have no attachment to their Islamic roots. It also cannot be accomplished by an individual alone.

Border-Crossers: Interrogating Boundaries through Bodies

Series: Ansari Conference 2018

Lailatul Fitriyah
January 16, 2019August 23, 2019

What we can infer from this panel is that the political, racial, and religious markers which compose borders are also etched and negotiated on the bodies of the marginalized others as ‘border-crossers.’

Sustainable Resources: Reimagining Our Relationship with the Earth

Series: Ansari Conference 2018

Marie-Claire Klassen
January 11, 2019January 18, 2019

In the age of the anthropocene—climate change brought about by human actions—religious traditions can offer vital resources for reimagining a sustainable relationship between humans, other animals, and the earth.