This course is primarily concerned with equivocations and uncertainties that surround the concepts and practices of religion in the modern period, including contemporary and popularly expressed preferences for “spirituality”.

Drawing on previous historiographical and philosophical discussions of religion, the focus is mainly on how religion can be conceived and understood within the fields of theological and cultural anthropology.

To explore the “relocations” of religion, we will examine the different modalities in which religious practices have migrated or relocated – wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly – in contemporary western society.

For more information on this theme, visit the Edward Bailey Centre for Implicit Religion and Spirituality

This is a postgraduate course open to ‘auditors’ e.g. those not enrolled for academic credit.

What does it mean to audit a course? 

In 2022, the teaching team was:

Jenny Leith is Dean of Studies at the Cambridge Centre of Christianity Worldwide. Prior to her current role, she completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Roehampton and a PhD in political theology at Durham University. Her research centres on the question of how Christian ethical and political formation takes place, with a particular focus on how this happens in the context of the Church of England. Her first monograph is shortly to be published under the title Political Formation: Being Formed by the Spirit in Church and World (SCM Press, 2022). This research grew out of several years spent working as a parliamentary researcher and in social policy. She is also a visiting lecturer at King’s College London and the College of the Resurrection.

Karen O’Donnell a feminist practical theologian with particular interests in trauma and in the relationship between theology and spirituality. Her most recent publication is The Dark Womb: Re-Conceiving Theology through Reproductive Loss (SCM Press, 2022).

Eve Poole writes and teaches on leadership, capitalism and consumerism. She has a BA from Durham, an MBA from Edinburgh, and a PhD in theology and capitalism from Cambridge. She was Third Church Estates Commissioner from 2018-2021, following earlier careers at Deloitte, Ashridge Business School and Gordonstoun. Her recent books are Leadersmithing, Capitalism’s Toxic Assumptions and Buying God.

Jayme Reaves is a public theologian, specialising in both the public impact of theological debates as well as supporting and providing a theology and theological methodology for the public(s).

Caroline Starkey is Associate Professor of Religion and Society in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds, UK.  She has taught on multiple undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the sociological study of religion, including research methods. Caroline’s research focuses primarily on the establishment, adaptation and development of minority religions in Britain.  She was involved in the first national survey of Buddhist buildings (funded by Historic England, with Professor Emma Tomalin) and she is particularly interested in gender, authoring Women in British Buddhism: Commitment, Connection and Community (published by Routledge) in 2020, and is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society (with Emma Tomalin), published in January 2022.