Discourses of Crisis and the Study Religion

This volume asks what happens when we classify something as a crisis, and what is at stake in linking these "crises" to "religion." After an opening section that explores the deployment of “crisis” in various aspects of higher education, this volume structures the critical approach to the category of crisis through four distinct sections: Language, Lexicon, Locus, and Locution. The section on Language examines the social rhetoric that emerges in historical moments of rupture, resistance, and reconstitution. The section on Lexicon considers different projects of persuasion exemplified in the critical study of religion in and through crisis. The section on Locus discusses three instances of religious institutions adapting to “crises” in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia, highlighting that religions are not fixed entities but living constructions. The final section, Locution, brings together senior scholars to assess the stated aim of the American Academy of Religion (i.e., “thinking about the actual human implications of religion in a world upended”) and explain how we might provide an alternative to that use of crisis in the field of religious studies. The book is concluded with an Afterword by Aaron Hughes.