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i want to walk a thin tightrope here. while fiercely advocating for the importance of religious studies programs in higher education, i also want to interrogate the trenchant anti-Blackness of religious studies *as a discipline* and why yesterday reveals so much. A THREAD
no religious studies scholar should have to come #onhere and crowdsource material to give to their students. the fact that many cannot build with multiple Black colleagues *in their own departments* because Black folks don’t *exist* in many of these departments is indicting.
the lack of Black core faculty in religious studies programs across the country is a feature of the discipline and not a bug. unfortunately, many approaches to theory, method, and historiography in the study of religion remains bound by the gravitas of anti-Blackness.
religious studies programs should be *leading* academic conversations about what happened yesterday but so few of scholars have the RANGE to account for how the legacy of white settler rebellions inform the politics of religion as well as the religious nature of the political.
i have so many brilliant Black colleagues who should be HEAVILY recruited by these programs. don’t tell me how budgetary constraints limit possibilities. MINE EYES HAVE SEEN the ways institutions & departments *create* space for the things they value!
yes. i do believe that religious studies are vital. however, when i glance at department faculty pages, i am forced to ask two unsettling questions: what, in fact, are *we* being asked to save & what role does (anti-)Blackness play in the soteriology of religious studies?
