Happy September! Please find below the NSRN’s September 2021 newsletter. News and announcements made by the NSRN and submitted by NSRN members are distributed monthly in this newsletter. To submit an announcement, news, or other relevant information to the next newsletter, please contact the NSRN Managing Editors at editor.nsrn@gmail.com.
New Blog Post!
Please read our latest blog post written by Hannah Mckillop - Secularism and Islamophobia: On the strategic use of “neutrality” in the Canadian public sphere
Please find it here:
Secularism and Nonreligion Journal
Secularism and Nonreligion is the world’s first journal dedicated to the investigation of secularism and nonreligion in all forms. Articles are published on a continuous basis, ensuring publication as soon as submissions are accepted and formatted. Secularism and Nonreligion is an interdisciplinary, fully open access, peer-reviewed journal with the aim of advancing research on various aspects of ‘the secular.’ The journal is welcoming contributions. Please visit https://www.secularismandnonreligion.org/ for more information.
Call for Submissions: Special Issue “Apostasy and Other Forms of Leaving Religion”
Guest Editor:
Dr. Julia Martínez-Ariño
Special Issue Information
The study of variegated forms of non-religion is gaining traction in the social sciences, as the numbers of those who identify as non-religious grow steadily across many regions in the world. The focus of this Special Issue is on those non-religious persons who reject religion for good. Therefore, the attention is on those people who once belonged to a religious tradition—actively or nominally—and then left it to not join any new one.
More specifically, this Special Issue aims to address apostasy and other forms of leaving religion in contemporary societies from a wide variety of perspectives and thematic angles. Apostasy is not a new research topic. There have been studies on the individual trajectories of apostates in various religious traditions and in different geographical locations. However, in this Special Issue, attention is given not only to its individual dimension but also, and especially, to its social and political dimension. Some of the questions that this Special Issue will deal with are the following:
- Individual stories, narratives, and identities: how do apostates narrate their individual process of leaving religion for good? How do they make sense of leaving religion and build their new identities?
- Institutional and communal responses to apostasy: how do religious communities and institutions respond to individuals leaving religion? Which narratives do they build around them? How is exit facilitated or prevented?
- Material and ritual aspects of religious exit: what are the material and visual aspects related to leaving religion? How is apostasy ritualized?
- The political aspects of apostasy: what are the political meanings that apostasy acquires in different contexts? How does apostasy relate to other sociopolitical processes?
The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together empirical research to shed new light on contemporary forms of apostasy across religious traditions and geographical areas, their meanings and implications. In doing so, it will contribute to and advance the existing social scientific theories of apostasy.
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI’s English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Special Issue Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/Apostasy_Leaving_Religion
Call for Papers: Ecologies of Belief and Practice
Special Issue of Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology (CRESP)
Guest Editors:
Rita Anne McNamara, John Shaver, Rohan Kapitany
Ecologies of Belief and Practice: Environmental influences on religion across cultural contexts
Aims and scope of the Special Issue
As one of the most consistent yet diverse aspects of social life, religious beliefs and practices provide a unique window into the ways that ecologies shape human experience. With such complexity, advances in computing and collection of massive datasets have only recently enabled researchers to begin to examine effects across ecological, societal, and individual levels of influence religion may have. This special issue will bring together anthropological, sociological, and allied disciplinary perspectives on the dynamic, multi-faceted interplay between socio-ecological contexts and religious life around the world.
We are inviting articles addressing the question of the influence of ecologies on religious beliefs and practices (in the broadest sense) across diverse cultural contexts.
The following questions are of particular interest for this special issue:
We welcome submissions that include empirical data, theoretical models, and literature reviews in the topic area. Methods spanning social, developmental, and cognitive psychology as well as anthropological and sociological analyses that can speak to any of these broad questions are also encouraged to submit these works.
Full open call can be found here: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/current-research-in-ecological-and-social-psychology/call-for-papers/call-for-papers-ecologies-of-belief-and-practice
Submission instructions
The Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology’s submission system will be open for submissions to our Special Issue from 31 Oct 2021. When submitting your manuscript please select the article type “VSI: Ecology Belief Prac”. Please submit your manuscript before 31 Dec 2021.
TIMELINE:
31 October to 31 December: portal for submissions will be open.
January-April 2022: Peer-review & revisions
Target release timeframe: mid 2022.
We hope that you keep us in mind for any possible submissions you may have. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or the other members of this special issue editorial team.
Call for Submissions: Secularism and Non-Religion in Canada
This edited volume contributes to the literature on secularism, non-religion, and atheism in contemporary Canada. Non-belief and non-believers are often given secondary consideration in broader explorations of religion and religiosity, and, as a result, remain under-examined, particularly in the Canadian context. This multidisciplinary book provides a broad exploration of issues relating to secularity, irreligion, non-religion, non-belief, atheism, and separation of religion and government in Canada.
We are calling for contributions from the fields of:
· Law - explorations of recent, current, and emerging legal cases and issues relating to non-religion and the separation of religion and government.
· Sociology - exploring broader trends in irreligion and non-belief in Canadian society.
· Politics - studies of political conflicts, campaigns, and issues relating to separation of religion and government and non-belief in Canada. Chapters focusing on individual provinces or campaigns are welcome.
· Anthropology - ethnographic studies of atheist movements, organizations, or communities.
· History - historical trends, case studies, intellectual histories examining issues pertaining to non-religion and secularity that continue to impact Canadian politics and society today.
· Emerging and future issues in secularism, non-religion, and the separation of religion and government in Canada.
Both qualitative and quantitative studies are welcome. While the focus of the books is Canada, comparative approaches are equally welcome, though Canada should be the focus of these studies. Submissions from fields other than those outlined above (such as philosophy, psychology, economics, or literature/communications) will also be considered.
Author’s Guidelines:
Submissions must include the proposed chapter title, 5 keywords and an abstract of maximum of 500 words. Please also include the author’s name, designation, affiliation, address, and contact information. The editor will assess all submissions and select the most promising abstracts, which are then developed further into full chapters of between 7,000 to 10,000 words.
Deadline for abstract submissions is October 14, 2021. If your abstract is accepted, we would expect a full draft by April 2022 (date TBD). Please email your abstracts as Word documents to the project coordinator and editor, Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff: teale@bchumanist.ca. Please also contact Dr. Phelps Bondaroff if you have any questions.
Editors
Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff, Research Coordinator, BC Humanist Association
Dr. Katie Marshall, Professor of Zoology, UBC and Board Member, BC Humanist Association
Adam P. Strömbergsson-DeNora, Freelance researcher and writer
Publications and Resources
· Ecklund, Elaine Howard, and David R. Johnson. 2021. Varieties of Atheism in Science. New York: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/varieties-of-atheism-in-science-9780197539163?cc=us&lang=en
· Haimila, Roosa, and Elisa Muraja. 2021. “A Sense of Continuity in Mortality? Exploring Science-Oriented Finns’ Views on Afterdeath.” OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying, 1-28. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00302228211038820
· Oake, Bethan Juliet. 2021. “The Relationship Between Holistic Practice and ‘Spiritual but not Religious’ Identity in the UK.” Secularism and Nonreligion 10 (1): 1-14. https://www.secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.150/
If you have resources you would like to share in our next newsletter, or would like to announce other publications, please email editor.nsrn@gmail.com.