Every friday, I publish The Week in Conspiracy, a roundup of news stories and the best articles from across the web, news and academia, over at Paper.li.
Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University | Co-founding Editor of the Religious Studies Project | Editor, Implicit Religion | Bulletin Editor of the British Association for the Study of Religion.
This site is where I promote my books and collect all the little bits of writing I do in other places. On the right you’ll find my most popular posts, and at the top my major publications. You can email me at david.robertson [at] open.ac.uk.
New Review in Nova Religio
Very pleased (and surprised) by Kelly E. Hayes’ review of UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age in the most recent issue of Nova Religio. I face an uphill battle to convince most of my colleagues why the work I do is even valid in the first place, so comments like these are most welcome indeed!
With its concise prose and engaging style, Robertson’s book offers not only a compelling analysis of contemporary millennialism, but an equally compelling model of critical rigor.
Real People, on the Ground | Studying Religion in Culture
A blog post for the University of Alabama about how critical studies in religion need to do more to demonstrate their practical utility, and how my editorship of Implicit Religion aims to help in doing that.
https://religion.ua.edu/blog/2019/03/27/real-people-on-the-ground/
The fact is that what gets counted as religion in specific contexts is perhaps the most impactful question we can ask as social scientists. Far from being merely discourse-about-discourse in some Ivory Tower, the critical approach shows what the category is actually doing in the real world – both to those whom it constrains, and those for whom it is useful.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium – ‘Blood And Rockets’
This combines many of my deepest passions – prog rock, the Beatles, and 20th century Magic(k). Hearing Les Claypool sing “Do What Thy Will” in 5/4 rings a lot of bells for me.
Sean Lennon is obviously interested in Magick – he talked about it in an interview with Billboard recently – but it sounds like a passing interest rather than something he is actively engaged with. I also would quibble with “he belonged to a magical cult”. The interview is pretty light but I enjoyed the brief description of how he and Les Claypool work together. The album’s up on Spotify now and I like it. I’ll buy it if I see it on vinyl.
Why looking through the lens of religion can help us to understand the popularity of conspiracy theories like Pizzagate | USAPP
A short piece co-written with Asbjorn Dyrendal for the LSE’s American Policy and Politics blog.
Discordianism Meets Ufology Part 00004: Were Gray Barker and Jim Moseley Original Discordians? | Historia Discordia
New Publication | Brill Handbook of Conspiracy Theory and Contemporary Religion
I am very pleased to see the book I’ve been working on for the last couple of years finally published (online, at least). The Handbook of Conspiracy Theory and Contemporary Religion was co-edited with Asbjorn Dyrendal and Egil Asprem, and it was a real pleasure to work with them – we all contributed actively and collaboratively, and I learned a great deal from them both. I think this will be an agenda-setting volume in this little subfield, and part of a group of new publications looking at CTs critically and interdisciplinarily.
Conspiracy theories are a ubiquitous feature of our times. The Handbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion is the first reference work to offer a comprehensive, transnational overview of this phenomenon along with in-depth discussions of how conspiracy theories relate to religion(s). Bringing together experts from a wide range of disciplines, from psychology and philosophy to political science and the history of religions, the book sets the standard for the interdisciplinary study of religion and conspiracy theories.
Chapters include methodological overviews from sociology, psychology and philosophy; regional case studies on Sri Lanka, Albania, Greece, Japan and elsewhere; thematic chapters on popular music, Esotericism, Church of the SubGenius, neo-Nazism, the Internet; and more. If you have institutional access, you should check it out. Please!
Recent Interviews
It’s been a busy year for the Religious Studies Project. We’ve just broadcast our last podcast (until September, at least), and are making plans for next year already. Now that we have two people to help me with the audio editing, I’ve been having fun getting back to interviewing again. Here’s three interviews I had broadcast in the last few months.
First up, ‘Spirituality’ – a term with enormous currency in contemporary discourse on religion, but frustratingly under-theorised. Little consideration is given to its development, and most scholarly work simply dismisses ‘spirituality’ as shallow and commercialised. I spoke to Boaz Huss and Steven Sutcliffe, to discuss the genealogy of ‘spirituality’, and its contemporary significance, with particular reference to the New Age movement. The second half focuses on how spirituality may trouble the religion / secular distinction, and its implications for the critical study of religion.
Ann Taves spoke to me about her work on “worldviews” and “ways of life”. This ambitious interdisciplinary project aims to place a micro-level analysis of individual worldviews into a broader evolutionary perspective. Through case-studies (including ‘secular’ worldviews like Alcoholics Anonymous alongside more traditional ‘religions’), she explains how worldviews form in response to existential ‘Big Questions’ – here understood as core biological needs and goals, rather than theological or moral concerns – and are enacted in Ways of Life, individually or collectively.
Finally, it’s always a pleasure to talk to A. Dave Lewis, this time for a discussion of representations of Muslims in superhero comics. We talk about some positive representations, like Kamala Khan, Marvel’s new Ms Marvel, and some less-than-positive portrayals, like Frank Millar’s Holy Terror! We talk about American comics as a product of the immigrant experience, and how comics made by Muslims play with the conventions of the genre. And we talk about how to use these texts in the classroom, as a powerful tool for exploring representation, media and religion. And what is the “wormhole sacred”?
