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Rev. Fannie Elizabeth Burgin Harris. She was a healer. She was a pastor, and while not ordained by any denomination, she certainly was no less in tune with the infinite as she cared for her family and led a rural congregation she founded. Rev. Harris was born around 1885 in Asheville, North Carolina, to formerly…
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There are these moments in which it seems time stands still. When everything seems to stop. Without closing your eyes, in your mind’s eye, the recollection is so strong that you can still imagine yourself there. Our brains are so delicate and fragile; they imprint the details of the sudden and the tragic. At a…
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Religion plays a substantial role in transforming the lives of incarcerated people, especially through conversion, which not only consists of a change in religious beliefs and associated behaviors but also social affiliations and networks. This dissertation uses Islamic conversion as an opportunity to study how religious identity change while incarcerated provides access to new networks…
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Increasingly, North Americans and Western Europeans identify as “spiritual but not religious.” But what does “spirituality” actually mean? And what does this recent “spiritual turn” reveal about the nature of twenty-first-century liberal democracies? Secularization theorists argue that “spirituality” lacks institutional support and a shared tradition, thereby evincing religious decline. Meanwhile, critical commentators contend that the…
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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit globally, Otros Cruces began a virtual training program studying two books on secularism and religious freedom written by the outstanding scholar Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a Professor at Northwestern University. We interviewed her, and she shared with us her main contributions in the disciplines of political science, religious studies, and the…
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The objective of HumanLines is to understand and to narrate: stories, dynamics, experiences, and difficulties, which distinguish the encounter, quite often the clash, and the interaction, between the people who migrate and communities of which they become a part. People is the keyword. More and more people have been forced to relocate, yet fewer and…
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Today the term fengshui, which literally means “wind and water,” is recognized around the world. Yet few know exactly what it means, let alone its fascinating history. In Laws of the Land, Tristan Brown tells the story of the important roles—especially legal ones—played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu…
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Petra Alsoofy is the senior outreach and partnerships manager at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). ISPU, a nonprofit applied-research organization, provides objective research and education about American Muslims to support well-informed dialogue and decision-making. Alsoofy’s work at ISPU includes strengthening valued partnerships and creating new ones, ensuring ISPU’s research reaches the public…
