Communicating Religion: The Socrel Annual Conference 2019

This year’s conference was on the theme of “Communicating Religion” and commenced with a keynote from Uppsala University’s Mia Lövheim on the theme of “Communicating Religion in Mediatised Society”. Drawing on Stig Hjarvard’s work in mediatisation theory — how religion is mediated through secular media institutions — Lövheim contended that this theory can be a useful framework for addressing the complexity of communicating religion, for example by asking what kind of religion is communicated and what religion becomes when it is communicated. Drawing on her reflections in interdisciplinary research, Lövheim urged scholars to engage with the theoretical issues of definitions and to be knowledgeable about the various forms of mediatisation of religion.

A number of parallel sessions follows throughout the first day. In “Religion and the Secular: Institutions” Alp Arat communicated the findings of the Leverhulme Trust-funded mappingmindfulness.net project, the first “large-scale social study of the mindfulness milieu in the UK”. The project has focused on the work and attitudes of mindfulness teachers across the UK, finding that the majority (70%) are women; most are educated to a high standard (61% are postgraduates); and that politically, mindfulness teachers tend to be strongly left-learning and centre-left with a pro-remain stance (only 5% voted to leave the European Union). One of the conclusions from the study is that mindfulness is a “coming of age spirituality”; indeed, the majority of respondents consider themselves SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious).

Jo Bryant from Cardiff University also presented her research into how chaplaincy legitimates itself in a secular public setting. Drawing on Bourdieusian accounts of capital, especially linguistic capital, Bryant contended these theories can help explain key inequalities between faith groups in chaplaincy. She noted that while Anglican chaplains are usually senior and paid, minority-faith chaplains are often unpaid and therefore less secure. Different processes of socialisation means that Anglican chaplains have more cultural and linguistic capital, said Bryant, calling on sociologists of religion to draw on political science in their work.

The second and final parallel session of the first day was on the topic of “Non-religion and Non-Abrahamic Religion”. Alongside Rachael Shillitoe from the University of Birmingham, who presented her research with Anna Strhan on “The Stickiness of Non-Religion: Intergenerational Transmission and the Formation of Non-Religious Identities”, Joanna Malone from the University of Kent talked about her life-history interviews with non-religious older adults and the difficulties of communicating non-religious beliefs with these individuals. Speaking with she called “everyday non-believers”, Malone asked participants what they believe in, while also examining their alternative beliefs. Malone noted that “there wasn’t always a ready-made category for participants to express their non-religious beliefs” and that it was somewhat easier for participants to articulate life meaning — such as children or marriage — rather than notions of belief.

Day two commenced with a panel session on “Religious and Modest Fashion”. Reina Lewis from the London College of Fashion, UAL, spoke on the theme of modest workwear as a communication of religious values, presenting the findings of a new research project on UK women wearing abayas to work in Saudi Arabia. Following this, Kristin Aune from Coventry University presented on modest fashion at work, tracing the employee experience in UK faith-based organisations, asking if women’s workwear could be considered a form of lived religion. Aune noted that modest fashion can be used as a tool for interfaith dialogue, but sometimes at the expense to women making clothing choices in the religious workplace. Lewis added that there is an “aesthetic labour” regarding the embodied practices of modest workwear, with women being required to adjust the way they dress and behave to meet religious norms that they may not share. 

The next keynote of the conference was from Jolyon Mitchell of the University of Edinburgh, with the title “In Search of Postsecular Theatre: the Mysterious Revivals of Religious Drama”. Putting a question mark over claims that theatre is in an age dominated by secular drama, Mitchell located religion in contemporary British theatre — from David Hare’s Racing Demon to satires and comedies such as The Book of Mormon and Jerry Springer: The Opera — including the resurgence of Mystery plays. Mitchell suggested that the revival in religious drama rests on the appeal of enacted suffering; the draw of performative communities; the magnetism of communal memories; the communication of passionate beliefs; the translation of tradition; the embodiment of devotional action; and the passion for performance. 

Following this was a parallel session on the theme of “Religion and Discourse”. Liam Metcalf-White from the University of Chester presented on his work with people in recovery from addiction, which explores how participants utilise the category of spirituality alongside other categories as secular, religious and non-religious. He posed the question of how implicit these terms are for those in recovery and suggested that religion and related taxonomies can be conceived of as socially constructed discourses. In the same session, Sarah Lawther from the University of Nottingham presented her research, which explored how to research, describe and disseminate verbal and non-verbal communications about religion and belief. Lawther used postcards with the statement “I find meaning when…” with her participants, aged between 19 and 24. These postcards, sent back to the researcher anonymously, helped participants to ’say’ things that were difficult to put into words. The individualised nature of meaning-making was reflected in participants’ language; they used their own definitions and interpretations of meaning, what Lawther described as “using their own words in their own way”. 

The last day of the conference started with a parallel session on the theme of “Religion, Representation and Image”. Carl Morris from the University of Central Lancashire gave an overview of Islamic media in Britain. Before 2010, he said, there was underrepresentation and typecasting was rife on British screens. Now there is a new wave of Muslim writers, actors and producers, motivated by a desire to represent a range of identities relating to religion, class and gender. Following this, Icram Serroukh from Middlesex University presented her research, which concerns the experience of British-born or British-raised women who have joined or left Islam. The gendered aspect of conversion has been significant in her study. Serroukh found with her participants that media played a prominent role in converts’ experience of becoming Muslim, using as one example the BBC show Bodyguard to demonstrate how Muslim women are portrayed in the media and to show how negative stereotypes are reproduced in TV programming.

The final keynote of the conference was delivered by Charles Hirschkind from the University of California, Berkeley, who used his research on Spain in the 21^st century and the memory of al-Andalus — medieval Islamic Iberia — to think about historical memory as a medium of religious communication. The keynote’s title, “What a 12th Century Muslim Says to a 21st Century Christian in Andalusia”, suggested religious communication from the distant past. Using the archive of andalucismo, which can be understood as localised nationalism, Hirschkind considered religion not as belief or practice but as a “heritable quality”, exploring that we are historically subjects of religion, even if this is not how we describe ourselves.

BSA’s Sociology of Religion Study Group conference was held between 9-11 July at Cardiff University.

Kim Harding is a PhD researcher in the sociology department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research employs the performance of ethical living narratives to investigate ambivalent non-religiosity, exploring how beliefs and values are mediated through the technical affordances of social media platforms. Prior to Goldsmiths, Kim was a graduate student at King’s College London, where she completed a master’s in Religion in Contemporary Society.