Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture

If you missed our latest episode, you can now watch on YouTube or find it on your favorite podcast platform! Show notes and Teaching Resources are now available for extended learning, find them and more: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/programs/rel...

"'Sacred' allows us to widen the tent so we can also be comparing people's experiences who deliberately leave the church and are spiritual but not religious because they're LGBTQ and have felt excluded or have religious trauma, etc." - Jamie Kucinskas on #ReligionAnd

"An over-reliance on the idea of the sacred can hide all the mundane stuff about religious life that is also really important. That actually doesn't sort of orient us toward these sort of grand visions, but involves bringing casseroles to people who are sick." - Ruth Braunstein on #ReligionAnd

"Sacred is a helpful term for us to use to start thinking beyond traditional religious life, while also recognizing that religious life, for at least in American culture and many other cultures, becomes a template for how communities gather around a shared vision of the sacred." -Ruth Braunstein

"American's are spending more time in the workplace... that is what I saw with bringing mindfulness into the workplace. People are bringing religion or religious ideas into places." -Jamie Kucinskas

"In today's age and culture (different work lives) it is harder to do religious practices that are tied to space and place... I am also thinking a lot on how AI and tech have been involved and will be involved in our religious lives." - Jamie Kucinskas on #ReligionAnd

"As religion is changing it also feeds back into some of the broader sort of destabilizing forces in the rest of our world." - Ruth Braunsein on #ReligionAnd

Join us in 30 minutes for Religion & New Sacred Spaces! Register here: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/programs/rel...

Join us today at 3pm on Zoom for an interesting conversation on some of the new spaces and settings where developing community, cultivating sacred experience, and practicing ritual exist outside of houses of worship. Register here: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/programs/rel...

Organized by Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, the Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C., on October 16, 1995. It was the largest gathering of African Americans in U.S. history (~850,000), with the goal to paint a more positive portrayal of Black males in America. #TDIH

Job alert! UC is hiring a tenure track line in Asian religions! Come work with me! jobs.uc.edu/job/Assistan...

Lilly Endowment has launched the Serving Neighbors Through Congregational Collaborations Initiative to support programs that encourage local communities to build stronger ties between congregations and charitable organizations. Learn more: lillyendowment.org/serving-neig...

Get ahead of the conversation around sacred spaces with some informative teaching and learning resources. You can find all these and more: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/resources/ Join us Thursday Oct 22 at 3pm EST for an interesting conversation! raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/programs/rel...

This mentoring session — open to the public! — will offer a valuable and rare opportunity for graduate students and junior scholars in Islamic Studies to candidly discuss a variety of practical concerns about navigating the field in these turbulent times. Register now: aarweb.org/event/rising...

Over 60 years ago, on Oct 11, The Second Vatican Council began. Learn more about the meetings, Catholic history, and more through the resources in our Teaching Resource Library! From Religion & episodes to syllabi created by YSAR and more! raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/resources/

Grateful for this coverage by @clairerafford.bsky.social of the Cornerstone courses we're piloting here at IU Indianapolis this year. With support from the Teagle Foundation, we're putting liberal arts questions—and big ideas—back into the core of the curriculum! mirrorindy.org/iu-indianapo...

Season 7 of Religion & started with a conversation on the paranormal. Join us this month for a conversation on new sacred spaces! We will examine the limits of traditional organized religion as well as emerging religious forms. Learn more and register: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/programs/rel...

Recent datasets are now available for free access on the ARDA, from the longest-running barometer of public opinion in Afghanistan to three waves of @pewresearch.org's American Trends Panel. Explore these and other datasets now on thearda.com.

Congratulations to former YSAR on their awards from AAR! The awards honor books of distinctive originality, intelligence, and creativity, and these titles affect decisively how religion is examined, understood, and interpreted. Learn more about the awards: aarweb.org/news/2026-aa...

My book, “Martyrs and Migrants” has received Best Work in the Study of Practices, Communities, or Lived Contexts from the @aarweb.bsky.social! Grateful to the committee for this recognition—I am absolutely thrilled! aarweb.org/news/2026-aa...

As we continue to highlight different resources around Hispanic heritage and culture, check out former Young Scholar Carolina Ortega's Religion, Conflict, and Sanctuary Syllabus. Find it here: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/teaching_res...

Missed Religion & the Paranormal? Want to dive back into the ideas on Big Foot? The recording, podcasts, and teaching resources are all available now! Find them all: raac.indianapolis.iu.edu/programs/rel...

During September and October there is a heightened interest around research and learning focusing on Hispanic heritage, history, issues, and more. Explore ideas on health, religion and culture with these free to access articles from RAAC! Find the articles here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"The paranormal is inherently a cultural definition." - Chris Bader on #ReligionAnd

"The democratization of information has definitely helped people understand that there are many ways of thinking and believing." - Coye Lloyd on #ReligionAnd

"What does the shifting in religion mean for paranormal belief and activity in the US?" - Question from student "It is going up... there is something about removing yourself from institutional religion that leads people to paranormal." - Chris Bader #ReligionAnd

"People keep going on bigfoot hunts or ghost hunts because they what to convince themselves and others they aren't crazy" - Chris Bader on #ReligionAnd

"How we define and categorize the paranormal or supernatural, is a great way to look at systems of power and how they function." - Coye Lloyd on #ReligionAnd

"The person who believes in bigfoot and ghosts has to be a person who believes there are powers beyond what we can see and prove." - Chris Bader on #ReligionAnd

"We have two major groups of the paranormal. Some forms of the paranormal are about enlightenment, internalized improvements. Discovery paranormal is based on evidence." - Chris Bader on #ReligionAnd

"My goal as a professor is not to change the mind of my students, but to present them with skeptical thinking and how it functions." - Jason Aukerman on #ReligionAnd

"If you are willing to give active belief to things that have no evidence (around bigfoot), what other areas are we willing to give our beliefs to with no evidence" - Jason Aukerman on #ReligionAnd

"The paranormal shows that we have no answers, we are just feeling our way through the dark." - Coye Lloyd #ReligionAnd

"I think of the paranormal more in terms of cultural boundaries. What I call paranormal is damned by religion and denied by science." - Chris Bader #ReligionAnd