Re-imagining Religion and Belief for Public Policy & Practice

The network will critically map ideas and understandings of religion and belief from across relevant disciplines, mainly in the Humanities but with some cross-over in to social sciences where significant work has been undertaken which is likely to stimulate further the humanities-focus of the network, and enable it to bridge in to the policy world. The participating disciplines are: Religious Studies, Political Philosophy, Public, Practical and Political Theology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology and Sociology of Religion, Social and Public Policy, and Critical Urban Geography.

A preparatory phase will see the PI and co-I undertaking informal interviews with 14-20 leading academics to resource a deep framing of the debates and contestations. This will underpin the heart of the network which will be a core of 7 academic experts (in addition to the PI/CI), 5 international academic experts, and 6 doctoral/post-doctoral participants who will take part in a major interdisciplinary colloquium to identify and debate key thinking, contests and debates. The focus is on interdisciplinarity, including internationally, and the network will search for points of connection and disconnection across and between these disciplines in the UK, Europe and North America. It will include participants from key international centres where significant recent work on religion and society is relevant, namely the Centre for Religion and Society at Uppsala University, Sweden, the Religion and Diversity Project at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and the Religious Literacy Foundation at Harvard, USA. This will lead to the publication of a critical overview of the key parameters of intellectual enquiry on the subject of contemporary religion and belief.

Findings and themes from the colloquium will be translated through structured workshops for a policy audience seeking to engage with religion and belief in the prominent fields of: security and cohesion; community and neighbourhood; education; welfare and the Third Sector; international development; and health and social care. There is clear evidence of a policy focus on religion and belief in each of these areas, which the network will also scrutinise and disseminate as critical academic outputs.

The PI and Co-I will also run knowledge exchange workshops in Helsinki, Ottawa and Boston, working with network participants to frame one day events to share and debate the re-imagined religion and belief and policy which has emerged.

The network will have important impacts for policy-making across a range of fields with an interest in religion and belief, in addition to the academic beneficiaries set out. Key policy areas which the network will connect closely with include: security and cohesion; community and neighbourhood; education; welfare and the Third Sector (especially within conditions of intensifying austerity); security and cohesion; international development; and health and social care. The key impact will be better policy-making based more closely on cutting-edge theory and evidence. This will be achieved through the carefully integrated structure of deepening exchange and iteration between different forms of knowledge which proposed for this network. This will calibrate policy-making with the real religious landscape, and enable a better relationship between policy contexts and real-world practices. This is important in three primary policy fields (Dinham 2009):

1) Service provision and welfare: what policy-makers call 'faith groups' are increasingly called upon to plug gaps in welfare and service provision as states roll back across the West. Following Putnam (2010) and as observed by Dinham (2009), faith groups are widely regarded as repositories of resources which can be turned to the common good - buildings, staff, volunteers, networks, and money. Understanding the real religious landscape as revealed by contemporary research and theory is essential if policy-makers are to look in the right places and in the right ways to realise their goals of connecting with these 'repositories'.
2) Community and neighbourhood: policy-makers also regard faith groups as 'good at community' (Dinham 2009; 2010; 2012), able to bring about bonding, bridging and linking social capital (Furbey, Dinham et al 2006), and being present in many, perhaps every, part of the country, even where other agencies may have withdrawn. They often work under the radar and at the margins in very local, grass roots projects and initiatives, and can be effective in reaching the harder to reach. A strong understanding of the role and contribution of religion and belief in this area will also enable policy-makers to provide a benign and/or actively supportive policy environment.
3) Security and cohesion: At the same time, policy makers have also been anxious about the potential of religion and belief to undermine community through extremism and violence. Policies have been criticised for homogenising and 'othering' Islam and for generating competition and divides at grass roots levels. Engagement with research and theory in this area will underpin a better quality of conversation and outcomes.

It is also clear that religion and belief are relevant issues in contexts of migration, globalisation and urbanisation, making for a mobile global population which is hugely religiously plural and who express religious identity and belief in countless ordinary and everyday spaces and contexts. A critical, interdisciplinary mapping of contemporary understandings and evidence about these macro dynamics and themes (including emerging clusters of ideas) has the potential to underpin significantly better informed policy-making in all of these fields. The planned workshops with policy-makers will specifically address these policy areas within the project timescale. The international knowledge exchange events will also be instrumental. The PI has significant track-record through his leadership of the Religious Literacy Programme, which works with leaders, employer groups and service providers to help them engage better with religion and belief and this will form a platform, with established credibility, for effective engagement.