WHAT: The Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR)
WHEN: October 31, 2025 – November 2, 2025
WHERE: Minneapolis Marriott City Center, 30 7th St. S, Minneapolis, MN 55402, United States of America.
DESCRIPTION: Look around the world today and it is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt: religion matters. Religion matters, from a social scientific perspective, because we cannot truly understand how individuals and communities make meaning, understand themselves, or confront challenges without taking religion seriously as a complex, pervasive and ever-changing social phenomenon. Religion matters on a societal and individual level as well. It is linked to our deepest conflicts and also offers profound resources for healing divides. Religious institutions, infrastructures, discourses and meanings permeate our social landscape and must be navigated by individuals regardless of their personal religious commitments. For those who are religious, the specific contours of this religious landscape can offer meaning, belonging and resources, or not, depending on one’s particular position within it. Even within societies and communities where organized religion has declined, secular life takes shape in the material and symbolic mold of previously powerful religious institutions. For better or for worse, religion matters. Yet religion is no single thing, and its content and form are perpetually contested by a wide range of actors. As scholars and practitioners, we do not stand outside these contests, but are nonetheless called to grapple fairly and honestly with religion in all its complexity and document this ongoing contestation. We are called to take religion seriously, even (or especially) when we are embedded in institutions and societies that do not heed this call.
SPONSOR(S): The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) and the Religions Research Association (RRA).