2017 EASR Conference in Leuven, Belgium
The 2017 EASR conference was organized by the Belgian Association for the Study of Religion (Babel).
The conference took place in Leuven from 18 to 21 September 2017.
The theme of the conference was "Communicating Religion"
For more information please visit the conference website:
https://kuleuvencongres.be/easr2017/
Minutes of the General Assembly 2017 Leuven
Communicating Religion
Communication plays a crucial role in religion and religious praxis. Religions claim to be able to create links with the divine and the transcendent, between humans and superhuman agents. But equally important, both for defining religion and for its subsistence, is the communication that takes place between humans. The conference will focus above all on this second aspect and study how a religion is communicated within the own tradition and towards outsiders. The first area deals with how religious traditions have been presented or present themselves to their members. It offers opportunities for studying a wide range of topics, including ways of creating “ideal” types or images of a tradition, handling moments of crisis, establishing and questioning forms of authority and structure, coping with dissidence, or balancing between preservation and renewal, and how all of these are communicated to the faithful. The second area deals with how a religious tradition positions itself towards outsiders. This includes such topics as reflecting on identity, coming to terms with the constant tension between intra- and extravert orientations, or developing modes for reaching out to others.