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Home / Category - critical religion

Category - critical religion

  • June 4, 2011
    What is a University for?

    The breadth and quality of education universities once offered is now being seriously eroded by underfunding, says Dr Andrew W. Hass from the University of Stirling. But funding is not where the deeper crisis lies, he suggests. Cutbacks are just the symptom of a greater underlying problem. The real problem is an identity crisis. What is 'the university' for?

  • May 26, 2011
    Sport, politics and religion

    Sport is part of a cultural and economic system, but it does not have to be repressive, even though sometimes - not least from a gender perspective - it is, writes Colette Gilhooley. There are also interesting links to be made and observed between the discourses and practices of sport and religion.

  • May 26, 2011
    Patriarchy, patrimonialism and paradigm change

    A gathering of the Sociology of Religion Research Group of the British Sociological Association gives Professor Richard H. Robert an opportunity to discuss the shifting patterns concerning discourse about religion in academe, the secular intellectual environment and the paradigm of glocalism.

  • May 25, 2011
    Churches, marriage and same-sex relationships

    This week, the Church of Scotland has been discussing a specially commissioned report on Same Sex Relationships and the Ministry at its General Assembly in Edinburgh. Alison Jasper from the University of Stirling unpacks the issues, as part of the Critical Religion series.

  • May 21, 2011
    Bolivian shares indigenous theology of 'sacredness with the earth'

    Any prospect of peace is, for Andean people, the search for balance and harmony among all beings that live in the same space, the IEPC has heard.

  • May 2, 2011
    The murder of Osama bin Laden: The end of the beginning of the 'clash of civilisations'?

    Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but if Americans and Europeans now think that they can begin to relax over the prospect of ‘international terror’, they are very mistaken, says Michael Marten. US policy in particular is catastrophically misaligned in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. The 'clash of civilisations' thesis is also gravely misleading, and religion (not least Islam) is not implicated in all this in the way simplistic analyses presume.

  • April 6, 2011
    Francesca’s buried biblical treasures

    BBC 2’s series, 'The Bible’s Buried Secrets', offers intriguing thoughts, but perhaps not as controversial as some of the promotional material would have it, says Alison Jasper. The world of biblical scholarship is broad and hospitable to different interpretations. And arguably, it is the essentially unanswerable but fertile questions that remain the Bible’s real buried treasure.

  • March 29, 2011
    Moving from inter-faith to inter-human dialogue

    Questioning the coherence of the newly-initiated World Interfaith Harmony Week, Michael Marten says that if neither 'faith' nor 'religion' really serve as useful comparative or relational concepts, it is perhaps intellectually more honest, and practically more fruitful, to abandon the pretence of ‘interfaith’ dialogue in favour of simple ‘interhuman’ dialogue.

  • March 24, 2011
    Interpreting prayer for the Japanese earthquake

    A clearer conception of what is meant by Christian prayer is needed, says Kat Neumann, if are to find in it an adequate, sensible yet sensitive response to a situation like the earthquake in Japan.

  • March 18, 2011
    Religion goes 'street' in Scottish academic pension protest

    Academics at Stirling University took part in 'teach-ins' yesterday, to coincide with national protests and strikes over controversial pension plan changes.