International Conference
Religion and Academia Reframed:
Connecting Religion, Science, and Society in the Long Sixties
February 4-5, 2021 – Online on Zoom
Free Registration: andrea.rota@relwi.unibe.ch
Download Conference Program
Over the past few years, the Long Sixties (ca. 1954–1973) have emerged as a pivotal moment in the globally entangled history of religion in the West. A growing number of studies have called attention to the profound transformations within the Catholic and Protestant mainstreams—at the level of both institutions and practitioners—and to the importance of countercultural movements and psychedelic experiences in shaping contemporary forms of religiosity. For instance, the social and cultural effervescence of those years affected the development of numerous evangelical denominations, contributed to shaping the manifold ideas of the “New Age,” and facilitated the rise and spread of various new religious movements (NRM). On the theoretical level, historians, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and scholars of religion offer competing interpretations of the impact of the socioeconomic changes of the Long Sixties on the evolution of individual and collective forms of religiosity. However, they all concur in identifying this period as a watershed, the analysis of which promises important insights for the systematic understanding of religion in contemporary societies.
Yet the Long Sixties also witnessed a change in the history of the scientific study of religion. On the intellectual level, a long-standing paradigm started to crumble, although most reactions favored adaptation rather than rejection of the dominant theoretical framework. On the organizational level, various research and advisory institutions were established or consolidated with the aim of understanding the ongoing religious transformation. Furthermore, fresh research interests emerged, notably the study of new religious movements. These dynamics were not limited to the academic domain. Indeed, in most cases, a number of social actors were actively involved in these processes, especially representatives of the mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches.
Against this backdrop, the conference investigates the dynamic relationship between religion, science, and social change in the Long Sixties and the legacy of that era in the conceptualization and study of religion in the following decades. Drawing on both theoretical reflections and empirical case studies, the conference seeks to situate the role of the Long Sixties in the current research programs of various disciplines and, at the same time, to discuss the intellectual and institutional impact of the Long Sixties on the contemporary interdisciplinary study of religion.
Thus, the research question at the core of this conference is twofold. On the one hand, the conference will investigate, from a socio-historical perspective, how the religious and scientific changes of those years may be best described and conceptualized at both the local and international levels. On the other hand, the conference will push a theoretical and reflexive agenda by studying the relationships between religious and academic institutions, actors, and discourses that marked the emergence of a systematic knowledge of the dynamics of religion in the second half of the twentieth century and up to today.
In sum, the conference will pursue answers to the following central questions:
How did the social changes of the Long Sixties shape the relationship between scientific and religious discourses?
How did diverse religious and secular institutions cooperate or clash, and how did they negotiate competing knowledge claims?
What are the assets and shortcomings of theoretical concepts such as (de- )differentiation, scientization, and entanglement in analyzing developments in fields such as the sociology of religion, Kirchensoziologie, theology, the study of NRM, and Religionswissenschaft?
The conference draws inspiration from the research project “The Legacy of the 1960s and 1970s: Religious and Scientific Entanglements,” founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and is hosted by the Institute for the Science of Religion at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The proceedings of the conference will be published in an edited volume.
Confirmed speakers:
Elisabeth Arweck, University of Warwick
Michael Ashcraft, University of Missouri
David Atwood, University of Basel
Chris Dols, Radboud University
François Gauthier, University of Fribourg
Massimo Introvigne, CESNUR
Simon Michel, University of Bern
Jörg Stolz, University of Lausanne
Jean-Philippe Perreault, University of Laval
Andrea Rota, University of Bern
Rafael Walthert, University of Zurich
Christina Wyttenbach, University of Bern
Organization:
Prof. Dr. Andrea Rota (contact): andrea.rota@relwi.unibe.ch
Christina Wyttenbach, M.A.
Simon Michel, M.A.
Dates and Location:
4-5 February 2021 – Online on Zoom
Registration
Free registration per email: andrea.rota@relwi.unibe.ch
Web:
https://www.relwi.unibe.ch https://www.legacy1960.com/