Why Study Religion? is a video series in which the CSR asks its faculty, students, staff, and guests what is important to them about the academic study of religion and why more folks should consider pursuing it. Find out more about the Center and its initiatives HERE. To learn more about OSU’s Religious Studies Major, visit our website at THIS LINK.

Why does Dr. Helen Murphey, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Mershon Center, study religion? Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’s Graduate Research Associate, interviewed Helen to find out. Watch the video below for her response!

Shurouq: How would you answer the question: Why study religion?

Transcript:

Dr. Helen Murphey:

I think it’s really important to understand how religion influences political behavior as a political scientist. So, I study religious social movements in North Africa and globally, as well as religious populism, and I think it’s really essential to see show religion informs not just worldview and ideology, but also identity and belonging. I think there’s often a tendency to view religion as being reducible to texts or practices or institutions, and while these are certainly important, my research also suggests that perceptions of religious belonging have a profound influence on how people contextualizw their sense of who they are vis-a-vis the world around them.  And this really matters a lot for understanding political mobilization. So, to appeal to certain groups, politicians may use religiously salient narratives or phrases or draw on certain symbols to express the kind of identification with a particular group, even if the significance of this language or of this style may be not necessarily understood as much by the wider public.

And at the same, understanding the complex ways that religious ideas and identities are embedded in our societies also helps to understand this connection between religion and politics beyond a religious-secular binary that I think is very common. For example, in even supposedly secular socities, such as one of the case studies I look at, Tunisia, prior to the 2011 revolution, religion did play a really big role in nation-building and creating a unified sense of national identity. And what what called secularism also involved quite heavy-handed control of the religious sphere. So I think it’s really important to see how categories like religious politics and secularism are historically constructed, how they intersect with structural power dynamics, and how they act as signifiers for different social and political visions in various ways. And I think, equally, this helps us to understand that religious identities and their political significance are not fixed and, in fact, are quite heavily contested. My research highlights the importance of socialization for religious movements where—through interactions with external factors, or through processes of internal contestation—these ideas and identities can and do shift in complex and very interesting ways.

Helen Murphey is a postdoctoral scholar at the Mershon Center. She received her Ph.D in International Relations at the University of St. Andrews in 2023. Her research focuses on the role of identity and ideology in politics, with a specialization in religious political parties in North Africa, populism, conspiracy theories and polarization. 

Why Study Religion? is a video series in which the CSR asks its faculty, students, staff, and guests what is important to them about the academic study of religion and why more folks should consider pursuing it. Find out more about the Center and its initiatives HERE. To learn more about OSU’s Religious Studies Major, visit our website at THIS LINK.

Why does Alyssa Bedrosian, a Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, study religion? Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’s Graduate Research Associate, interviewed Alyssa to find out. Watch the video below for her response!

Shurouq: How would you answer the question: Why study religion?

Transcript:

Alyssa Bedrosian:

My research explores Catholic feminism and abortion rights activism in the United States and in Latin America. So, I am really interested in this relationship between feminism and religion broadly, and feminism and Catholicism specifically, and the potential of Catholic feminism and other religious feminisms to advance abortion rights.

What I have really found through my research is that most feminist scholarship tends to ignore religion and/or dismiss women’s religiosity. When feminist scholarship does address religion, it tends to focus on religious fundamentalisms without recognizing the plurality and diversity that characterize many religious traditions. And for me, this results in feminist scholarship and feminist activism that I think really falls short. Across the United States and Latin America, where my research is focused, most people identify as Christian, with women tending to be more religious than men. But, feminist scholarship continues to dismiss the religious beliefs and the religious practices of most people in the Americas.

Feminist scholar bell hooks talks a lot about the importance of building a mass feminist movement that is accessible and speaks to a lot of different people. And so, I think to do this, we need to start having nuanced conversations about religion and feminism.

Alyssa Bedrosian is a fourth-year Ph.D student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies and a 2024-25 Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Graduate Team Fellow. Bedrosian’s interdisciplinary research explores feminisms in Latin America and the United States. Her dissertation examines twenty-first-century Catholic feminism and abortion rights activism in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States. 

Why Study Religion? is a video series in which the CSR asks its faculty, students, staff, and guests what is important to them about the academic study of religion and why more folks should consider pursuing it. Find out more about the Center and its initiatives HERE. To learn more about OSU’s Religious Studies Major, visit our website at THIS LINK.

Why does graduate affiliate Karin Ikeda study religion? Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’s Graduate Research Associate, interviewed Karin to find out. Watch the video below for her response!

Shurouq: How would you answer the question: Why study religion?

Transcript:

Karin Ikeda:

I was born and raised in Japan, and Japanese people tend to think of themselves as not religious, and the word religion has a really bad connotation to it because of World War II. And also, there are modern movements that try to abolish superstitions, and…Oumu-Shinrikyo incidents in the 90s, [when] a religious cult…carried out a terrorist attack on thousands of people who were commuting via subway. And in Japan, religion and cults are almost synonymous, but we have a Buddhist and Shintoist tradition. We have rituals, festivals, and ceremonies embedded in our culture. For example, in New Year, I go to a shrine to pray for good health and fortune almost every year with my family. And when I had a university entrance exam, I bought a talisman from a shrine or temple to wish for good luck. We also have Christmas in Japan, and it’s quite popular to do weddings in a western style with a fake minister who is normally like a random Western guy. I always like to learn about new cultures from different countries, and religion has always been a fundamental part of it. And I find it fascinating that even though Buddhism and Shintoism are shaping the fundamental part of Japanese culture, and Christianity has a huge influence on our culture, we act like we’re so rational and not religious at all. Most younger Japanese people will do all the things that I mentioned, and they will fully believe that they’re not religious at all. I find it fascinating and that’s why I first was drawn to religious studies.

Karin Ikeda is an M.A. student in the Department of Comparative Studies. She is also a CSR Graduate Affiliate. With a background in religious studies, she is interested in contemporary spiritual movements in Asia and the U.S. and the reception of Asian religions in the U.S.