Sturgill, an associate professor, is co-editor of (ABC_CLIO 2019), released just this month. Over thirty authors contributed to the two-volume collection, which examines how religious practices worldwide have adopted and adapted to digital media. In her chapter, Sturgill investigates artificial intelligence and its uses in religious spheres. 

Hatcher’s book titled (Lexington 2018) engages a range of contemporary topics, from Moral Mondays to Christian films and performers. It looks at how religion in the US is intertwined with American popular and civic culture. The book considers how Christianity adapts to and is affected by new media forms. Many students will be familiar with these subjects and Hatcher from his popular class, COM 333: Religion and Media, which he teaches each spring.

The event will be held from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. in McEwen 013. 

Orsi’s talk was the inaugural event for the new annual Smith-Chase lectur, sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies. Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Lori and Eric Sklut Scholar in Jewish Studies Geoffrey Claussen, who chairs the department, opened the event and explained that the lecture honors the legacies of H. Shelton Smith, a 1917 graduate of Elon College and the founding director of graduate studies in religion at Duke University, and Carole Chase, professor emerita of religious studies at Elon, who started the endowment fund for the lecture.

In his introduction of Orsi, Brian Pennington, professor of religious studies and director of the Elon Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, discussed the influence of Orsi’s work on the lived religion of U.S. Catholics. He observed that one could talk about two eras in the study of religion.  

“Before Orsi, the study of religion was done in grayscale and its sound was a droning clerical monotone," Pennington said. "After Orsi, there was color and noise, deep sadness and deep joy.”

Orsi’s first and most famous book, "The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950" helped revolutionize the study of religion by examining the lives of religious people. Orsi’s most recent book, "History, and Presence," looks at modern debates about the reality of divine presence, specifically in the Catholic Church.

Orsi structured his talk around accounts of survivors he has collected and he critiqued the frameworks commonly used to study sexual abuse. He noted that such abuse was traditionally examined through the lenses of criminology, psychology and sociology. These methods, he observed, “thoroughly secularized” sexual violence,” even when it took place within religious institutions.

Orsi argued that this relationship to religion needs to be incorporated into our understanding of clerical abuse, but that we must also acknowledge its nearness. Sexual deviance has typically been associated with “cults” or religions foreign to the observer, allowing people to say “not here, not in our religious world” and promoting an “us versus them” dichotomy.

Orsi concluded his talk by referencing the experience of survivors he had interviewed, who had taught him that “it was a religious mystery to be sexually abused by a priest.” Orsi and Associate Chaplain for Catholic Life Father Peter Tremblay spoke to the audience of the ample support available on campus for anyone affected by sexual abuse in any way.

Two of the student presenters have been mentored by Rebecca Todd Peters, professor of religious studies. Kristina Meyer presented research on the challenge of white Christian guilt in faith-based community organizing and Lindsay Jordan studied the contemporary Poor People’s Campaign, analyzing leadership among lower-income  communities in the struggle for social change. Jordan’s paper won the conference award for the Best Undergraduate Research Paper.

​With her mentor Assistant Professor of Arts Administration David McGraw, Katherine Francisco looked at whether different groups of viewers took offense at the theatrical production "The Book of Mormon." Mentored by Professor of Religious Studies, Brian Pennington, Sophie Zinn’s research examined identity, religion, and secularism in Denmark. Mentored by Associate Professor of Religious Studies Amy Allocco, Styrling Rohr’s research looked at devotional music and religious experience in a North Carolina Sikh community. Finally, with her mentor Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Ariela Marcus-Sells, Brianna Elder presented her research on the mistranslation of Christianity in Africa.

During the conference, students were also able to learn about research conducted by professors and graduate students as well as undergraduate students at other colleges and universities throughout the Southeast.

Engaging in conversation with their peers from other institutions, students gained a better sense of the breadth of the field of religious studies while building networks for future cross-fertilization and collaboration. Many of these same students will also be presenting their research at Elon during the Student Undergraduate Research Forum (SURF) on April 30.

The Elon contingent at SECSOR was organized by Senior Lecturer LD Russell. Also presenting at the conference was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Andrew Monteith whose paper was titled, "Postmillennialist Understandings of Progress and Narcotics Reform in the Late Nineteenth and Earlier Twentieth Centuries."

Support for student travel was provided by the Office of Undergraduate Research, the Department of Religious Studies, the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society.

Pope Francis gave unprecedented access to the world-renowned director, Wim Wenders, and to different actors in the Vatican. The Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society and Catholic Campus Ministry will screen the film Thursday, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. in Turner Theatre.

In the documentary, Wenders underscores three distinguishing features of this papacy: Pope Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first pope to hail from the Americas (specifically Argentina), and the first pope to adopt the name of St. Francis of Assisi. Wenders was able to speak with Francis in candid settings, and the pope speaks his mind frankly, giving audiences direct access to the leader whose words and decisions have stirred controversy and admiration in the Catholic Church.

The documentary covers other aspects of the current papacy, such as Pope Francis’s emphasis on his three T’s: Trabajo (work), tierra (earth), and techo (roof), each of which he believes are fundamental to the rights of all people. The pope has also become a vocal advocate for the earth, reflected in his encyclical on the environment called “On Case for Our Common Home.” This was the first encyclical about the environment ever written by a pope.

“Pope Francis: A Man of His Word” sheds light on many current events in the Catholic Church. The documentary’s intimate portrait of the pope places his hopes and aspirations for the Catholic Church in a new light. The film was released worldwide on May 18, 2018, and continues to be shown in various countries.

See this enticing and raw documentary about Pope Francis’s vision for the future of religion in Turner Theatre this Thursday.