Founded in 2011, the Religion in Society Research Network explores the relationship between religion in society and the changing nature of spirituality.
Annual Conference
International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society attendees include leaders in the field, as well as emerging scholars, who travel to the conference from all corners of the globe and represent a broad range of disciplines and perspectives. A variety of presentation options and session types offer opportunities for attendees to share their work, discuss key issues in the field, and build relationships with attendees.
Spaces, Movement, Time: Religions at Rest and in Movement
Historically as well as in the present day, the spaces created for religion frequently reflect the meaning of the religion itself. Christian churches, Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, monasteries, hermitages, and ashrams are places where the believer prays, learns and interacts with their companions in belief. In these places, the believer also carries out many of the rites of passage that configure and mark the most important moments of their life. Outside of these special places, there is debate in today’s secularized societies on the extent to which religion can appropriate the public space to make itself visible.
Since prehistory, religion is reflected in individual or group movements towards destinations that are considered privileged in terms of the religious experience that is lived. In these spaces, religion manifests itself in a very special way. Such places are visited either seasonally, functionally, or because the religious group obtains a special identity or an individual collective benefit, from healing to contemplation. In the case of contemplation, the experiential is intimately linked to a space, in this case, configured to seek a state of stillness and rest.
Finally, religions migrate throughout the world taking their characteristic configurations of space with them. These movements may be matters of necessity, in the case of social crisis and conflict. Or they may be voluntary, arising from missionary desire. The movement of religions has been a constant throughout history, but today it constitutes a fact that decisively accompanies current migratory movements, giving rise to complex societies where the role of religion as an identity factor and as a presence in built spaces is strengthened or weakened, depending on the context.
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