Social Science Research Council

Among the striking but not always recognized dimensions of globalization is a more or less simultaneous revitalization of religious engagement. This includes private devotion and renewal of theological study and debate, but it is also, centrally, a claim to public relevance. The prominence of religion in American public life has grown, as have the religious dimensions of international conflicts and terrorism. Religion has also increasingly offered resources for resolving conflicts and seeking reconciliation, through the efforts of international movements of peace and the work of faith-based nongovernmental organizations, and, controversially, in the functioning of state-sponsored truth commissions. The SSRC examines these and other changes in the relationships between religion and the public sphere.

Working Groups on Religion and International Affairs

With initial support from the Luce Foundation, the SSRC aims to strengthen both scholarly and public attention to religion’s place in international affairs. Working with researchers and practitioners to catalyze new thinking and to construct new agendas for research, the SSRC seeks to foster innovative engagements with prevailing approaches to the study of religion in international perspective. Its work supports the integration of scholarship on religion into the teaching and research of schools of international and public affairs, and aims to build interdisciplinary networks, strengthening connections between a diverse range of projects and initiatives. A Working Group on Religion, Secularism, and International Affairs analyzes the intellectual neglect of religion and the power of secularism in the arena of international affairs, while an Advisory Committee for Religion and International Affairs seeks to draw on and further develop a renewed attention to religion in both schools of international affairs and the broader world of public policy.

Forthcoming Publications

Rethinking Secularism. The SSRC Working Group on Religion, Secularism, and International Affairs is working to collectively produce a volume to be co-edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. The group seeks to reframe discussions of religion in the social sciences by drawing attention to the central issue of how “the secular” is constituted and understood, and how this shapes both analytic perspectives in the social sciences and various practical projects in politics and international affairs.

Religion and World Affairs. Under the leadership of Alfred C. Stepan, the SSRC Advisory Committee for Religion and International Affairs is working to generate an edited volume for an audience of students, scholars, policymakers, and journalists, as well as others who are professionally concerned with religion and international affairs. The volume is being co-edited by Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred C. Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft.

Varieties of Secularism in A Secular Age. Sociologist Robert Bellah has called Charles Taylor's A Secular Age "one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime." In collaboration with Yale University, the SSRC organized an April 2008 conference on A Secular Age. The conference will result in an edited volume, to be edited by Craig Calhoun, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Michael Warner.

Religion, Spirituality, and Social Science. Scholars and practitioners alike have constantly invoked and constantly confused distinctions among religious, secular, and spiritual life. In collaboration with the School for Advanced Research, the Council will host a conference in October 2008 that engages the ways that these distinctions shape social movements and projects, claims to authenticity and authority, and relations to history, institutions, and intimate others. The conference will result in an edited volume, to be edited by Courtney Bender and Ann Taves.