Call for Papers: Religion in Social Movements, Rebellions and Revolutions

Panel proposal to the Association for Sociology of Religion Annual Meeting Montreal, Canada August 13-14, 2017

Karl Marx’s quotation that religion is the “opium is the people” is frequently taken out of context and misunderstood. In the same passage, he also wrote religion is “an expression of real suffering and a protest against” it. Historically, religion has not only been a source of domination but also an instrument of social change.

A classic example of this is the English Revolution, which was the first political revolution and otherwise known as the Puritan Revolution. However, successful revolutions, as Charles Tilly has pointed out, have only taken place under monarchies and dictatorships. In modern democratic societies, protest against the dominant power structure has often taken the form of social movements.

For this panel, we invite papers that explore the relationship between religion, social movements, rebellion and revolutions. We are interested in the role that religion has played in: peasant, slave, and plebeian rebellions; modern revolutions including but not limited to the English, French, Russian, Chinese and Iranian; and social movements. This includes but is not limited to prophetic and messianic movements, heretical sects, religious communism, secular religions, and liberation theology.

The intent of this panel is for papers to be turned into manuscripts to ultimately be published in an edited volume or a special issue of a journal.

Deadline for Proposals: March 15, 2017

Please send them in MS Word by e-mail to: Jean-Pierre Reed, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, reedjp@siu.edu and Warren S. Goldstein, Center for Critical Research on Religion, goldstein@criticaltheoryofreligion.org