Book Talk with Janine Giordano Drake

The Gospel of Church

On September 19, IU History Professor Janine Giordano Drake joined IU Religious Studies Professor Constance Furey at the Center for Religion and the Human for a book talk on Drake's recent monograph The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Community Conversation at Bethel AME Church

Solidarity in Everydayness

In anticipation of Professor Emilie Townes' Charles H. Long Memorial Lecture, IU Religious Studies PhD candidates Mihee Kim-Kort and Amber Lowe, alongside IU Professor Randall Jelks, initiated a discussion around evil and community solidarity at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Bloomington, Indiana on Wednesday, September 11.

IU faculty and students, as well as Bloomington residents and community members participated in this public conversation.

Emilie M. Townes gave the Charles H. Long Memorial Lecture

shadowboxing the ridiculous

On Thursday, September 12 at the Cook Center in Maxwell Hall Dr. Emilie M. Townes gave the Charles H. Long Memorial Lecture: "Shadowboxing the Ridiculous."

Townes is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Religion and Black Studies at Boston University School of Theology. An American Baptist clergywoman, she is a native of Durham, North Carolina. She tolds a Degree of Ministry from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a PhD in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University.

The Charles H. Long Memorial Lecture is a biennial lecture series on Black religion, honoring the life and work of Professor Charles H. Long.

Knausgaard Reading and Writing Collective featured in The Immanent Frame

Forum on Experimental Books

The Abyss or Life Is Simple: Reading Knausgaard Writing Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by the Knausgaard Reading and Writing Collective was featured in The Immanent Frame's forum on experimental books.

"Refusing the choice: Neither academic nor novelist, an experiment in writing," by Jeffrey Kosky

"Us being changed," by Kathryn Reklis

"Writing living," by Scott Korb

"Experiments in collective labor," by Kyle Wagner

"The future of us," by the Knausgaard Reading and Writing Collective

Center for Religion and the Human receives $750,000

from the Henry Luce Foundation

Constance Furey, Cooper Harriss, Sarah Imhoff, and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, co-PIs on the grant, expressed gratitude for the Henry Luce Foundation’s generous support and called it deeply affirming of the work they've done so far.

“This is a collective project,” Sullivan said. “Together with IU students and faculty participants from other universities, we’re excited to continue the Center’s research, creative activity, pedagogical innovation, and programming, building off of what we’ve developed in the first five years of our existence.”

Conference on Unstately Religions in the Americas

in Spanish and English, with simultaneous interpretation

Funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, "Religiones insumisas y luchas anti racistas en las Américas / Unstately Religions in Anti-Racist Struggles in the Americas" took place June 5-7, 2024 at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Participants included academic researchers, graduate students, and religious leaders.

“. . . you’re doing it right now”: Aaron Bushnell and Legal Pluralism

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

What if we understand Aaron Bushnell’s action as opening onto a different legal order—and collectivity—one to which we all also belong?

On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell set fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. A member of the US Air Force stationed near DC, Bushnell transmitted a live videorecording of himself in front of the embassy, announcing that his intention was to perform an extreme act of protest against genocide.