AAR Roundtable – The Contradictions of Religion and Modernity in the 21st Century

Presider:

Anna Sun is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at Duke University.

Panelists:

Richard Madsen is distinguished research Professor and Director of the UC-Fudan Center for Research on Contemporary China at the University of California, San Diego.

Ann Swidler is Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley.

Carolyn Chen is Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion at UC Berkeley

Ahmet Kuru is Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University.

Roundtable themes:

This roundtable panel was inspired by the late work of Robert Bellah, especially through engaging with the new edited volume Challenging Modernity (Columbia UP, 2024), in which social theorists and scholars of religion debated the question of religion in modernity, which has been central to Bellah’s work. The focus of the panel was the seeming contradictions between the transcendent aspirations of religion and the social and political perils we now face in the global 21st century. How to deal with the tension between the transcendental, universalizing ambitions of democracy and the restricting exigences of time, place, and function? What does transcendence mean when it is nurtured by for-profit capitalism? What is the relationship between political, religious, economic, and intellectual classes in the global Muslim communities? The panel included two original members of the “Habits of the Heart” group, Richard Madsen and Ann Swidler as well as two leading sociologists of religion, Carolyn Chen and Ahmet Kuru. 

“From the 1960s until his death in 2013, Robert N. Bellah was the preeminent figure in the study of religion and society. He broke new ground in mapping the religious dimensions of human experience, from the great breakthroughs of the first millennium BCE to the paradoxes of American civic life. In three essays, published in Challenging Modernity for the first time, Bellah grapples with the contradictions of modernity, and seven leading thinkers responded with profound, exhilarating new perspectives on our present predicament.”

Professors Richard Madsen and Professor Ann Swidler reflected on Bellah’s scholarship and extend Bellah’s insight that only “deep historical, cultural, and religious understanding can help us meet modernity’s harrowing challenges by sharing responsibility for the global interdependence of our common fate.”

Professor Carolyn Chen drew from her research on Silicon Valley work culture as well as race, ethnicity and religion in America to reflect on Robert Bellah’s contributions to the study of religion and modernity in the US. The author of Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, Chen has been examining how contemporary tech firms offer spiritual care, blurring the boundaries between religious communities and workplaces. What does transcendence mean when it is nurtured by for-profit capitalism?

Professor Ahmet Kuru discussed the connections between his work on Muslim societies and Robert Bellah’s writings on sociology of religion in global perspective. Kuru focused on the relationship between political, religious, economic, and intellectual classes in both presenting his work and discussing Bellah’s scholarship. In addition to newly edited volume “Challenging Modernity,” Kuru also referred to Bellah’s 1968 essay “Islamic tradition and the problems of modernization.”