Social Science Research Council

A consequence of hinging our conversation on belief is that it tends to project “belief” in the abstract onto some believer, elsewhere. I often experience the dialog in the secular academy about religion as involving a kind of division of believing labor, if you will, in which avowed non-believers puzzle over the intricacies of religious belief, its loss, its renewal, its existentially contradictory character, without much investigation into the lived experiences and practices of the “religious.” [...]