Charles M. Stang, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), discussed the Center’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation,” and introduced its first cohort of research associates and post-doctoral fellows: Matthew Dillon, Hadi Fakhoury, J. Christian Greer, Giovanna Parmigiani, and Meryl (Mimi) Winick.... Read more about Video: Transcendence and Transformation

Todne Thomas, HDS Assistant Professor of African American Religions, discusses her recent publication, "Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality." Judith Casselberry (Bowdoin College) and Soong-Chan Rah (North Park University) served as respondents.

... Read more about Video: Author Discussion with Todne Thomas: Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality

Where do our ideas about how the economy works, and our views on economic policy, come from? Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets, among economists as well as many ordinary citizens, is a form of religion. The foundational transition in thinking about what we now call economics, beginning in the eighteenth century, was decisively shaped by the hotly contended lines of religious thought at that time within the English-speaking Protestant world.... Read more about Video: Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

In this lecture, Professor Wouter Hanegraaff from the University of Amsterdam discussed the relevance of entheogens to theurgy and ritual evocation in Roman Egypt, with special attention to the story of Thessalos, the so-called Mithras Liturgy, and the Neoplatonic practice of Iamblichus.... Read more about Video: Reasonably Irrational: Theurgy and the Pathologization of Entheogenic Experience