Religion as Political Communication: A Symposium
10:00 - 16:00, 7th June 2018
Religion is communicated politically in multiple ways: by religious institutions and individuals, by governments with different approaches to religion, via various artistic and cultural expressions, by secular news media, and via digital platforms and communities (Lundby 2017). The types and contents of politically communicated religion are diverse and complex, ranging from the Church of England’s conservative stance on marriage as reserved for heterosexual couples, French lawmakers interpreting religious symbols such as the veil as ‘too political’, the West-End musical success ‘The Book of Mormon’, terrorist acts of violence committed in the name of religion, to representations of ‘Muslims’ as a non-diversified group. Religion can communicate political stances in both direct and indirect ways, such as when drawings of the Prophet Mohammad are considered as unacceptably irreverent expressions of free speech, or when specific positions on abortion, creationism, stem-cell research and euthanasia are inferred when someone declares their stance as ‘religious’. In this symposium, internationally leading scholars on religion and politics are invited to address and debate religion as political communication.
Programme
10:00 Welcome and introductions
10:15 Dr Elizabeth Poole (Keele University): Contesting #stopislam: Political frictions and appropriation in online spaces
10:45 Professor Jolyon Mitchell ((University of Edinburg): The Ambivalent Role of Religion and the Media Arts as Political Communication in Israel /Palestine
11:15 Q & A session
11:45 Lunch and networking
13:00 Dr Jasjit Singh (University of Leeds): The construction of ‘Sikh radicalisation’ in Britain
13:30 Professor Mia Løvheim (Uppsala University, Sweden): Religion, mediatization and a changing political landscape
14:00 Q & A
14:30 Coffee break and networking
15:00 Roundtable discussion
15:45 End of programme
Symposium organisers: Dr Line Nyhagen (Social Sciences), Dr Alexandre Christoyannopoulos (Politics, History and International Relations), PhD student Xinan Li (Social Sciences), Loughborough University.
For speakers’ abstracts, please see:
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/crcc/events/eventslist/religion-as-political-communication.html
Thank you.
Best wishes
Line, Alex and Xinan
Loughborough University
Epinal Way
Loughborough
Leicestershire, UK
LE11 3TU