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Dear friends and colleagues,

Next week's colloquium will be dedicated to conceptual questions of multiple secularities, hosted by our Directors Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Christoph Kleine. As part of our Screening Religion series, we will be showing the film "Outback Rabbis" next Wednesday. We also have two new KFG publications for you as well as recommendations for a lecture series, an on-site lecture and a conference report.

And with today's Finding, we invite you to an afternoon with meditation at our KFG.

Take care and have a good week!

Anja

Next Week’s Colloquium: Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Christoph Kleine on “Historicizing Secularity and Comparative Secularities”, 18 May

Conceptual questions play an important role in many of our discussions, but we often lack the time to devote to them centrally. Based on two recent contributions by our directors Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, we will use next week’s colloquium to discuss with our current generation of scholars the developments that the concept of multiple secularities has undergone since the beginning of our project.

As always, you can find the relevant readings in our Member Area.

The colloquium will take place in a hybrid format (on-site and online). Please register for the colloquium via e-mail, if you would like to join in person. In the Member Area you will also find information on the zoom connection data.

18 May | 9.15–11.45 a.m. (CET)

KFG Strohsack, Room 4.55 and online via Zoom

Screening Religion: “Outback Rabbis”, 18 May at naTo

Our Screening Religion film series continues: The film “Outback Rabbis”, directed by Danny Ben-Moshe, is a story of a unique group of people with a distinct set of beliefs, willing to go to the extrems to fulfil their religious duties. It takes us into the remotest corners of Australia and the hidden world of the Australian Jewish community in the bush.

The film will be shown in English and there will be a discussion afterwards. 

We recommend ticket reservation as there is still limited seating. Please wear a FFP2-mask upon entering the cinema and while walking around. The mask can be taken off while seated.

18 May | 7.00 p.m. (CET)

Cinémathèque Leipzig at naTo, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 46, 04275 Leipzig

Free entry, donations welcome

New Publications: André Laliberté on “Chinese Religions and Welfare Regimes Beyond the PRC–Legacies of Empire and Multiple Secularities” and “Religion and China's Welfare Regimes–Buddhist Philanthropy and the State”

We would like to share with you a new publication by our Senior Research Fellow André Laliberté, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, who spent the year 2019 in the KFG to work on these books.

The first part on “Chinese Religions and Welfare Regimes Beyond the PRC–Legacies of Empire and Multiple Secularities” is a detailed account of Buddhist philanthropy as viewed from the perspectives of the state, civil society, and Buddhists. This book contributes to our understanding of secularity in non-Western societies, as influenced by religions other than Christianity. The second volume “Religion and China's Welfare Regimes–Buddhist Philanthropy and the State” offers a unique analysis of relations between religion and state in the People’s Republic of China by presenting how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tries to harness Buddhist resources to assist in the delivery of social services and sheds light on the intermingling of Buddhism and the state since 1949.

Laliberté, André. Chinese Religions and Welfare Regimes Beyond the PRC–Legacies of Empire and Multiple Secularities. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Laliberté, André. Religion and China's Welfare Regimes–Buddhist Philanthropy and the State. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Public Lecture: Sana Chavoshian on “Micro-relics: Dust and the Multiple Returns of the Past in the Landscapes of War”, 12 May

Our Associate Member Sana Chavoshian will give a lecture as part of the seminar “Material Secularities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives” and speak about “Micro-relics: Dust and the Multiple Returns of the Past in the Landscapes of War”.

The lecture is open to everyone who is interested. If you would like to attend the event in person, please register with the organizers.

Our Senior Researchers Magnus Echtler and Nur Yasemin Ural , together with our Senior Research Fellow Katharina Wilkens, are offering the seminar “Material Secularities–Interdisciplinary Perspectives” this summer semester at Leipzig University.

12 May | 5–7 p.m. (CET)

Leipzig University | Seminar building, Room S 403 and online via zoom

2022 Chuan Lyu Lectures in Taiwan Studies: Philip Clart on “The Gods as Agony Aunts. Divination, Individual Problem-Solving, and Popular Religion in Contemporary Taiwan”, 12 May

We would like to point to this year’s Chuan Lyu Lectures in Taiwan Studies, organized by the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. Our Senior Research Fellow Philip Clart will provide insights into the role of religion in contemporary Taiwanese society. In his lecture on “The Gods as Agony Aunts. Divination, Individual Problem-Solving, and Popular Religion in Contemporary Taiwan” he addresses the religious practices of individuals and small-scale temple-focused communities.

12 May | 3 p.m. (CET)

University of Cambridge, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Site, Room 1.02

Conference Report “A Quarter Century of Public Religions”, 19–20 April

The 1994 publication of “Public Religions in the Modern World”, by José Casanova, marked a paradigm shift in the study and understanding of religion in the modern world. The book challenged the dominant narratives of secularization and particularly secular liberal theories of democracy that claimed that religion had become and ought to remain a private affair.

Our Senior Research Fellow Giuseppe Tateo recommends this conference at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University on "A Quarter Century of Public Religions” in April – a conference that was more than a celebration of the book and its argument, in fact an invitation to examine the global transformations of religions in the public sphere in the last twenty-five years. Leading experts in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, religion, history, and political science, among them Charles Taylor, Rajeev Bhargava and Hans Joas evaluated these transformations from their own area of expertise and research.

The various contributions and discussion rounds of the two-day event are now available on the conference website.

If you have any content that you think suits the purpose of the weekly, please feel free to send it to us at multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.