Social Science Research Council

In the Boston Review, Tara McKelvey reports on the hope of Veterans Affairs administrators that religious faith could be a replacement for costly psychiatric care for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

K.L. Noll begins his recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education with a relatively uncontroversial clarification of what the academic study of religion represents. He then, however, goes on to insist that theology, while potentially academic, does not actually advance knowledge.

Inside Higher Ed reports on a new phenomenon that is beginning to gain attention and grow: humanist chaplains on college campuses.

Patheos, a site devoted to “global dialogue about religion and spirituality,” which launched last year, is now partnering with On Faith for a contest that asks college students to make and submit videos about their religious faith and practice.

At Religion Dispatches, Richard Ricketts interviews Sharon Nepstad, a sociologist of religion whose new book, Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement, explores the nearly 30-year history of the Catholic anti-war group.

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Carlin Romano argues that training for journalists needs to be more deeply grounded in philosophical reflection.

In the Boston Globe “Ideas” section, Michael Fitzgerald reports on a new Harvard study about how religious belief appear to affect economic behavior.

In the 85th anniversary issue of Commonweal, Mark Jordan reviews The Future Church by Vatican correspondent John L. Allen, Jr.

Professor Daniel Philpott is a leading theorist of global politics and religion at the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the author of the forthcoming Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation, which proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework for peacebuilding in the wake of conflict.

At this past week’s American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, approximately 4,500 scholars, students, journalists, and exhibitors from around the world gathered to share their research, ogle newly-published volumes,and trade professional gossip over hors d’oeuvres.