American Religious History Symposium, Newcastle University, March 26, 2015

From the Religion in American History blog:

Praying during revival meeting at a pentecostal
church, Cambria, Illinois, January 1939.
Arthur Rothstein, 1915-1985, photographer.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

On Thursday, March 26, 2015, the history programs at Northumbria University and Newcastle University will co-sponsor a symposium on “American Religious History.” The event will be open to the general public.

Since September 11, 2001 the study of American religion—through literature, history, sociology, politics, film, and a host of other fields—has been booming.  That might have been surprising news to scholars 50 years ago.  In the 1960s renowned sociologists like Peter Berger predicted that America would become more and more like secular Europe. That did not happen, and in the coming decades Berger made an about face. “[T]he assumption that we live in a secularized world is false,” as he bluntly put it in the late 1990s. “The world today, with some exceptions . . . is as furiously religious as it ever was. . .”  Now scholars and journalists are asking how this upsurge in religious belief and practice relates to standards of tolerance, ethnic identity, and political engagement. Stanley Fish sensed the growing importance of religion in the wake of the 9/11 and the terrorist attacks: “When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.” read more >>>>