The Religion Factor

The terror attacks in Brussels on Tuesday have once again raised questions about the relationship between religion and violence. In today’s post, Erin Wilsonreflects on these issues, exploring key arguments made by Prof William Cavanaugh during his recent lecture in Groningen and book The Myth of Religious Violence. 

Next Tuesday 23.2.2016, at 11:00-13:00 Prof. Smadar Lavie will give a lecture in Groningen as part of a tour promoting her book “Wrapped in the Flag of Israel” – Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture. The lecture will take place in the Zittingszaal, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Oude Boteringestraat 38, Groningen. In today’s post, Ronit Nikolsky provides a brief overview of the content of Prof. Lavie’s book and the questions and issues she will explore further during this lecture.

In today’s post Ton Groeneweg continues his analysis of liberal de-culturalization as a deeper trend exposed by the responses to the attacks in Paris. In this second part of his blog, he focuses on how this process of de-culturalization has sincere consequences for our existence in liberal societies, and how the experienced threats to our liberal existence might offer some opportunities as well.

After a brief hiatus, today we continue our series of reflections on the broader meaning and consequences of events such as the attacks in Paris in November late last year. In today’s post, which is the first of a two-part blog, Ton Groeneweg reflects on the structures that create and sustain the image of superiority of liberal values and positions, supposedly under threat by the attacks in Paris. This image appears to be caught in a self-blinding mechanism that, in refusing to see its own specific cultural biases, threatens to further alienate and exclude those who do not conform to its implicit norms. In the second part of the blog, he will also briefly respond to the earlier contributions of Erin Wilson and Joram Tarusarira to this series.

Today’s post continues our series of reflections on the attacks in Paris, Beirut and Iraq. Joram Tarusarira responds to Erin Wilson’s call to accept ambiguities, posing a few problems and questions with this approach

In yesterday’s post, Aukje Muller and Roos Feringa provided a summary of a public lecture delivered by Prof Jonathan Israel at the University of Groningen. CRCPD Director Erin Wilson was one of three scholars asked to give a response to Prof Israel’s talk. These remarks are published in today’s post.

On Wednesday 4 November 2015, Jonathan Israel gave a University Colloquium lecture in Groningen, organised by Studium Generale. In his talk, Israel focused on the still very relevant notion of tolerance in the Dutch Republic, from the early Enlightenment period onwards. In today’s post, Aukje Muller and Roos Feringa summarise and review Prof Israel’s lecture.

Radicalization’ is becoming an increasingly common word in contemporary politics and public discourse. Yet it crops up in seemingly unrelated contexts, most recently in Paris, in relation to both terrorism and climate change. This raises a number of questions about what or who radicalization actually refers to. Erin Wilson reflects on these ambivalent dimensions of ‘radicalization’ in today’s post.

In our previous post, Erin Wilson and Brenda Bartelink shared a summary and preliminary insights from a pilot study on spirituality and development transformation. In addition to the project specific findings, their research has also highlighted additional areas of focus for research on religion and development more broadly. In today’s post, they discuss these additional insights, developing suggestions for a broader research agenda on religion and development.

Researchers at the CRCPD recently concluded a one-year NWO-funded pilot project exploring the entanglement of personal religious and spiritual transformation with broader processes of social transformation in developing contexts. The project was a collaboration with the Knowledge Centre Religion and Development and World Vision International and included field research amongst communities and World Vision staff in Zimbabwe, and a workshop with academics and practitioners in The Hague in June of this year. In this post, Erin Wilson and Brenda Bartelink provide a summary overview of the project and its preliminary findings.