2024 Themes

Founded in 2020, the Religion in Peace Society  explores the relationship between religion in society and the changing nature of spirituality. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions.

The  International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Peace Society calls for research addressing the following annual themes and special focus

 

2024 Special Focus—Spaces, Movement, Time: Religions at Rest and in Movement

Theme 1: Religious Foundations

  • Religious values and aspirations
  • Sacred sources: sites, narratives, texts
  • Religious philosophies and philosophies of religion
  • Theological sources and resources
  • World sources: religious and secular cosmologies
  • Creation accounts in science and religion
  • World destinies: religious and secular eschatologies
  • Reason and faith: congruencies and conflicts
  • Traditional, modern, and postmodern orientations to religion
  • Science and religion: congruencies and conflicts on the sources of design in the natural world
  • Religious counterpoints: agnosticism, atheism, materialism, and secularism
  • Religious prophets: their messages and their meanings
  • Religiosity: measures, forms, and levels of religious commitment
  • Religion and law
  • Religion and commerce
  • The natural, the human, and the supernatural
  • Rites and sites of passage: birth, adulthood, marriage, death
  • Medical ethics and bioethics
  • Anthropologies, psychologies, and sociologies of religion

Theme 2: Religious Community and Socialization

  • Religious institutional governance
  • Symbology in theory and practice
  • Religious education and religion studies
  • Religiously-based schools and religion in public schools
  • Religion in ethnic, national, and racial identities
  • Congregations and religious community
  • Media for religious messages
  • Evangelism and conversion
  • Ritual, rite, liturgy
  • Prayer, contemplation, and meditation
  • Meditation as healing and therapy
  • Religious ‘ways of life’ and lifeworld practices
  • Religious art and architecture
  • Pilgrimage, tourism, and the search for spiritual meaning
  • Religious leadership

Theme 3: Religious Commonalities and Differences

  • Comparative studies of religion
  • Monotheism, polytheism, and immanentist religions
  • Indigenous or first nation spiritualities
  • Inter-religious harmony
  • Interfaith dialogue
  • Religious diversity, tolerance, and understanding
  • Religions in globalization
  • Centrifugal and centripetal forces: difference and interdependence
  • Denominationalism: tendencies to fracture and recombination
  • Literal and metaphorical readings of sacred texts
  • Religion, identity, and ethnicity
  • Interreligious education
  • The nation state and religious exceptionalism
  • Religious dual belonging
  • Ecumenicalism
  • Interfaith dialogue and international interfaith organizations

Theme 4: The Politics of Religion​

  • Religion in politics and the politics of religion
  • Modernity and religious frameworks
  • Religious freedom in secular states
  • Chaplaincies and the state
  • Politics, society, and religion in religiously defined states
  • Religious minorities and the state
  • Social agendas for religion: sustainability, justice, peace
  • Religious divisions and social conflicts
  • Religiously inspired violence and non-violence
  • Gender, sexuality and religion
  • Women, patriarchy, and the sacred feminine
  • Religion as a source of community cohesion or community dissonance
  • Terrorism, political extremism, and religion
  • Religion and human security
  • Religion and global ethics
  • Religion and human rights
  • Religion and reconciliation
  • The future of religion

Participate as a Presenter

For over 10 years, we've offered a place to create an intellectual frame of reference for the academic study of religion and spirituality and to create an interdisciplinary conversation on the role of religion and spirituality in society. We welcome returning and new members to add their voices to the conversation.

In-Person: In-Person presentations will be delivered onsite. We offer innovative formats for a range of presentation styles.

Online Only: online presentations will be delivered and viewed online as asynchronous digital media. Online Only presenters also have discussion boards to structure conversations and access to other online activities.

Conference as Archive: we'll capture and add as much content as possible on the conference microsite. While it's a requirement for online-only presenters, we strongly encourage in-person presenters to pre-record and upload their presentations to the conference microsite. The conference microsite becomes an archive to which delegates and Research Network members can return anytime.

With this step-by-step guide, we walk you through the new phases pre/during/post-conference to ensure you have a productive conference.

Participate as an Audience Member

Audience Passes are for those who want to benefit from the content, connect with presenters, and join the discussion. Audience members will also be recognized in the program for their participation. We welcome returning and new members to add their voices to the conversation.

In-Person: participate in innovative in-person formats, plenaries, talking circles, garden conversations, and on a human scale. You will also have access to all online-only content.

Online Only: gain access to live and recorded presentations, welcome addresses, plenaries, and curated thematic content -- from any place and in your own time.

Conference as Archive: we'll capture and add as much content as possible on the conference microsite. And you can help here too. If you do not see digital media on a presenter page, you can request it from the presenter. You can also add comments to discussion boards of all content. The conference microsite becomes an archive to which delegates and Research Network members can return anytime.