Re: Funding Opportunity

 
From: "rsieb3@PROTECTED rsieb3@PROTECTED [Center for Critical Research on Religion Listserve]" <ccrr_listserve@PROTECTED>
Subject: Re: Funding Opportunity
In-Reply-To: Funding Opportunity
Date: August 26th 2019

Dear Friends:

I have just retired as Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion from 64 years of teaching and research in Germany, Europe and America. During this time I developed with my friends in Germany, Europe and America our "Critical Theory of Religion and Society (CTRS)".


Through the years the CTRS has found expression in over 30 books and over 400 articles of mine, not to speak of books and articles written by my students and friends, as well as in the foundation and direction of a Center for Humanistic Future Studies at Western Michigan University, and of an international course on the "Future of Religion" in the Inter-University Centre at Dubrovnik, Republic of Croatia, and of an international sister course on "Religion in Civil Society" with the Universities of Simferopol and Sebastopol in the Republic of Crimea.


It has been and will continue to be the purpose of the CTRS, to help to reconcile the modern antagonism between the religious and the secular, and thus the consequent conflicts on the religious side between believers who stress revelation, and believers who are also open toward the modern enlightenment movements, and on the secular side between enlightened people, who promote total secularization and the end of religion, and those who are also still open for progressive religious ideas and values and want to translate them into the modern and post-modern discourse of the expert cultures, and beyond that into the life world in modern systems of human condition and action systems, characterized by communicative praxis, mediated by ethical and socio-ethical norms, and into the economic subsystems, determined by instrumental action mediated by money, and into the political subsystems, also characterized by instrumental action, but mediated by power.


In the CTRS as discourse, understood as future-oriented remembrance of human suffering with the practical intent to diminish it, believers and non-believers meet in order to help to resolve the ongoing more or less bloody culture wars. This discourse must continually be kept open and be prevented from being closed fundamentallstically, or naturalistically and positivistically.


The CTRS is practical in that it works for peace among religions and nations. There is no peace among nations without peace among religions. There is no peace among religions without dialogue between the religions. There is no discourse among the religions without foundational research in the religions and in the nations. The CTRS understands itself as such research process with the practical intent of reconciliation.


You can find out about all the work connected with the CTRS on my website. http://www.rudolfjsiebert,org/


In November 2019, Western Michigan University will perform a Conference on the Critical Theory of Religion and Society (CTRS) at the occasion of my retirement after 54 years of teaching and research at Western Michigan University. WMU would also like to establish a Chair and Humanistic Research Center for the Critical Theory of Religion and Society, in order to promote the CTRS further into the future, for generations to come.




Here we need your help! We are looking for individuals, institutions, foundations, corporations, etc., in America and Europe, who would be interested and able to help us fund such a CTRS Chair and Humanistic Research Center for Religion and Society at Western Michigan University.


In Europe, Germany is particularly important for us, since the CTRS has originally been derived from the Critical Theory of Society of the Institute for Social Research at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt a.M., before it became global.


Please, let us know if you are interested in our important project, and if you can help support it with a financial contribution? We would greatly appreciate it if you can forward this letter onto others who can help support this project.


I am with all my best wishes,

Your

Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert

Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion

Western Michigan University

Kalamazoo, Michigan USA









-----Original Message-----
From: Warren S Goldstein goldstein@PROTECTED [Center for Critical Research on Religion Listserve] <ccrr_listserve@PROTECTED>
To: Center for Critical Research on Religion Listserve <ccrr_listserve@PROTECTED>
Sent: Mon, Aug 26, 2019 10:57 am
Subject: [CCRR_Listserve] Funding Opportunity

 
From: goldstein@PROTECTED

 

                                                                                                        

 

Request for Proposals

 

The Sociology of Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation

 

Rice University and the University of California, San Diego are pleased to announce a $2.9 million re-granting initiative.  The “Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation” project will specifically fund sociological research that empirically examines how identities and beliefs are related to science and religion.  This project has been designed to provide support for new scholarship in the sociology of science and religion. The project, led by Elaine Howard Ecklund (Rice University) and John H. Evans (University of California, San Diego), is funded through the Templeton Religion Trust and coordinated by The Issachar Fund.

 

 

Religion and science are perhaps the dominant ways of meaning making in the late modern world.  While theologians and philosophers have built an impressive body of work on how science and religion should relate, and historians on how people have connected science and religion in the past, we know little about how contemporary people actually understand the science and religion interface.  This project on the sociology of science and religion, with a focus on beliefs and identities, is running concurrently with, and interacting with, separate yet aligned proposals in cognitive science/psychology and evolutionary anthropology.

 

We can imagine sociologists asking a number of questions within this broad framework.  We offer just a few examples: How do aligned identities (such as race, class, and gender identities) intersect with religious identities to shape beliefs about science, and beliefs about the relationship between religion and science? How do people use religion and science to anchor their identities in the modern world?  For example, are there people for whom science is an identity that operates in a manner similar to how religion operates as a source of identity?  Do people use religion and science to establish other identities? Given that people experience religion and science at the same time in their lives, how do people combine these perspectives to form meaningful action? 

 

 

Awards for projects related to this initiative are available through the following five award types:

  1. Sociology graduate student fellowships ($50,000 each for a total of two years of funding).
  2. A two-year postdoctoral fellowship for a sociologist to be in residence at Rice University.
  3. Research grants ($100,000 each) for early career sociologists.
  4. Research grants ($200,000 each) for mid-career sociologists.
  5. Research grants ($200,000 each) for senior sociologists.

 

All awards will run two years in length. Early-career, mid-career, and senior scholar awards are eligible to begin as early as April 1, 2020; all projects must be completed by June 30, 2022. Graduate student and post-doctoral fellowships will begin on July 1, 2020 and must be completed by June 30, 2022. Letters of Intent are due October 15, 2019 for faculty grants, and January 15, 2020 for graduate student and postdoc awards.

 

For complete information about grant application eligibility, instructions and deadlines, download the full RFP from:  www.religion-science-sociology.com

 

 

John H. Evans

Tata Chancellor’s Chair in Social Sciences

Professor of Sociology

Associate Dean of Social Sciences,

Co-Director, Institute for Practical Ethics

University of California, San Diego

 

 

 

 

Center for Critical Research on Religion Listserve

Post to: Center for Critical Research on Religion Listserve ( ccrr_listserve@PROTECTED )
Manage Your Subscription
Unsubscribe
                                                           
rss/atom
‹ Funding Opportunity
Index
Now in Paperback!!! ›
Forward to a Friend
 

This is the listserve of The Center for Critical Research on Religion (http://www.criticaltheoryofreligion.org). The Center publishes the journal Critical Research on Religion with SAGE Publications (http://crr.sagepub.com) and the book series "Studies in Critical Research on Religion" in hardcover with Brill Academic Publishers (http://brill.com/scrr) and in paperback with Haymarket books (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/series_collections/13-studies-in-critical-research-in-religion).

The purpose of this listserve is to serve as a means of communication for The Center and its activities, and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas between scholars interested in the critical theory of religion, critical research on religion, and the critical study of religion broadly defined.

We invite you to join this listserve to stay informed and to inform others.

*If you are having difficulty subscribing to this list, please contact goldstein@criticaltheoryofreligion.org

Privacy Policy:

The archives of this listserve will be open to the public. However, the membership list including the e-mail addresses will stay private.