Berkley Center

Berkley Center Senior Fellow Jocelyne Cesari and Senior Research Fellow Gerard Mannion are leading several panels at the 2019 meeting of the European Academy of Religion (EuARe), held March 4 to 7. Cesari is current president of EuARe, and Mannion is founding chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network.

A new Brookings Institution blog recaps a January 8 panel featuring Berkley Center Senior Research Fellow Peter Mandaville with Shadi Hamid, Geneive Abdo, and Indira Lakshmanan. They discussed a new report connected to a joint Brookings-Berkley Center project on the geopolitics of religious soft power.

A panel of experts on global peacemaking and international security debated the complex role religion and religious leaders play in causing or preventing violent extremism, starting with two critical questions: firstly, how important religion is as a factor in violent extremism, and secondly, what kind of role religion and religious leaders can play in countering these groups.

Writing in Emergence Magazine, Berkley Center Senior Fellow Paul Elie is struck by the thought that the Catholic Church and the natural world have traded places as sources of transcendence and wonders how religion and the natural world might come together for shared renewal.