Center for Religion & the Human: Indiana University

Welcome to the Center for Religion and the Human (CRH)

As we are pressed by advances in technology and biology, on the one hand, and by rapid social and political change, on the other, theology and religious studies promise a space of reflection, perspective, and new possibilities. Funded by grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Office of the Vice Provost at Indiana University Bloomington, the Center for Religion and the Human supports interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research on religion which attends to these new realities while being rooted in IUB’s traditions of excellence in humanist, social-scientific and historical scholarship.

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Featured News

Failure is an Option: Queer Failure and the Negotiation of Religious Identity

by SJ Crasnow

"My life as a queer and trans Jew also provides me with personal experiences of how marginalized people navigate their relationships to religious traditions and communities. These experiences then become examples of religious diversity I can choose to share with students."

New book from Co-Director J. Kameron Carter

coming in august 2023

In The Anarchy of Black Religion: A Mystic Song, J. Kameron Carter examines the deeper philosophical, theological, and religious history that animates our times to advance a new approach to understanding religion. Drawing on the black radical tradition and black feminism, Carter explores the modern invention of religion as central to settler colonial racial technologies wherein antiblackness is a founding and guiding religious principle of the modern world.

Learn more about Dr. Carter's book on the Duke University Press website.

Interview With Visiting Scholar of Ecclesiastical Law

Alessandro Ferrari

Alessandro Ferrari is Professor of Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Insubria in Como, Italy. He visited IU Bloomington in March 2023, hosted by the Center for Religion and the Human, the Department of Religious Studies, the Center for Constitutional Democracy, and the Institute for European Studies. He gave several seminars and workshops as well as working individually with faculty and students.

Read Winni Sullivan's interview with Alessandro Ferrari.

Teaching Religion in the Foreign Language Classroom

by Jermaine Butler

"If that student had been in a course that focused on Islamic history, maybe they would have been more sensitive to the perennial issues that plague the ummah. But without the time and materials to engage in an extensive discussion of religious taboos, what can we do?"

Watch the Iris Book Award Prize Ceremony

For “Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse” by Mary-Jane Rubenstein

The Iris Book Award Prize Ceremony took place on February 4, 2023 at the meeting of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture at Arizona State, where Mary-Jane Rubenstein read from her award-winning book, Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse and joined in conversation with Alexus McLeod (IUB) and Catherine Newell (University of Miami).

Learn more and watch the ceremony.

Hosting Paikea: On Indigenous Ontologies of Carving and Kinship

by Aaron Glass

"...I wanted to feature Paikea’s story to educate audiences on how Indigenous conceptions of 'active matter' are challenging standard Western ontologies and museum values, and how some museums are productively engaging with communities to adapt and adjust their protocols."

Teaching Queer Christian Theology [Where It Can’t Be Taught]

by Samuel Ernest

"Christian institutions that refuse to hire LGBTQ faculty are precisely the places where queer theology and queer theological pedagogy belongs. Not just because the student body needs it, but due to the constitutive irony of queerness..."

Cultivating Curiosity, or, Why Study Scripture At All?

by M. Adryael Tong

"Different people and different publics will have different reactions, thoughts, and answers to the question. But for me, it is precisely this practice of asking, thinking, and answering that is important."

The Abyss or Life Is Simple: Reading Knausgaard Writing Religion

OCTOBER 2022

"An absorbing collection of essays on religious textures in Knausgaard’s writings and our time," featuring work by Courtney Bender, Jeremy Biles, Liane Carlson, Joshua Dubler, Hannah C. Garvey, M. Cooper Harriss, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, and Erik Thorstensen.

Learn more about "The Abyss or Life Is Simple"

Animating Religious Literacy: Japanese Pop Culture and Teaching through Video

by Kaitlyn Ugoretz

What do you know about Japanese religions? And how have you come to know what you know?

CRH receives second major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation

Unstately Black Religion: A Three-Year Study

We are pleased to announce that co-directors J. Kameron Carter and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan have been awarded a $250,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the initiative “Unstately Black Religion: A Three-Year Study.”

Learn more about the Henry Luce Foundation grant