The New Visibility of Religion

Although sociologists such as Marx and Durkheim predicted that religion would eventually dissipate like a fog over a clouded culture, the exact opposite has taken place. Religions continue to survive, and even thrive in our global multicultural societies. This can be seen in the news media, which regularly reports religiously motivated violence, the political sphere where presidents and prime ministers alike increasingly refer to their 'faith', and, as well, in a number of popular films and novels which take religion as their primary theme. So too, so called 'world religions' such as Christianity and Islam continue to spread in both northern and southern hemisphere contexts, raising a number of important questions about their new forms and cultural interactions. This course will explore this new visibility of religion through key religious, social and political theorists.