The 28th Annual Law and Religion Symposium “A Time to Heal: Peace among Cultures; Understanding between Religions”

Jane Wise is an Associate Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University

The 28th Annual Law and Religion Symposium, sponsored by the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and BYU Law School, was centered on “A Time to Heal: Peace among Cultures; Understanding between Religions.”

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began the 28th Annual Law and Religion Symposium Sunday, October 3, 2021, with a discussion about healing and equal privileges of belief among all people. From a pre-recording at the G20 Interfaith Summit in Bologna, Italy, held in September,  panelists included Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Sister Sharon Eubank, first counselor in the Relief Society general presidency and president of Latter-day Saint Charities, and Elder Jack N. Gerard, a General Authority Seventy. Brett G. Scharffs, a professor at BYU Law School and director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, moderated the discussion. This was the second time the symposium was hosted virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The Recognition of the Rohingya Genocide: An International Criminal Law Perspective

Michelle Coleman is a Lecturer in Law at Swansea University

On September 17, 2021, Rehman Chishti and Knox Thames wrote a blog post for the New Atlanticist calling for the US and UK governments to label the crimes committed by Myanmar’s military against the Rohingya Muslims a “genocide.” Specifically, they call for this label to be used by the United States and United Kingdom during the United Nations General Conference. They argue that identifying this situation as a genocide would remind the world that there is an ongoing conflict with atrocities being committed, create pressure that would discourage the new Myanmar government from continuing these atrocities, and encourage the US and UK to refer to matter to the International Criminal Court or use universal jurisdiction to prosecute those involved.

These are admirable goals. The Rohingya Muslims have suffered varying degrees of persecution since the 1970s. The situation escalated in 2017 however when Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts. Myanmar’s army responded to those attacks by destroying at least 288 villages, killing thousands, and driving 700,000 Rohingya out of the country. The violence against the Rohingya people continues to this day.

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Interview: Catherine Wanner on Religion in Post-Communist Countries

Catherine Wanner is a Professor of History, Anthropology and Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She earned a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University.  She is the author of Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine (1998), Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (2007), co-editor of Religion, Morality and Community in Post-Soviet Societies (2008), editor of State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (2012) and editor of three collections of essays on resistance and renewal during the Maidan protests in Ukraine. Her research has been supported by awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. In 2016-17 she was a visiting professor at the Institute of European Ethnology of Humboldt University and in 2019-20 she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Ukrainian Catholic University. She was awarded the 2020 Distinguished Scholar Prize from the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity. Professor Wanner was interviewed by Dmytro Vovk.

Watch a shorter video version of this interview here.

Anthropological Approach in Studying Religion

In your works, you utilize an anthropological approach to studying religion. How does that approach help us to better understand religion in communist and post-communist countries?

I think it helps on many different levels. An anthropological approach centers on what’s called “participant observation.” This means long-term fieldwork in-country, which gives a certain kind of insight and knowledge to contemporary developments that complement the kinds of knowledge gained from sociological or political surveys. The main contribution that ethnographic research offers is how and why people understand certain categories, values, and other ideas the way they do. It can help in concept formation or in interpreting the results of surveys, which very often can be puzzling or otherwise inexplicable and surprising. But combined with ethnographic research, the two can offer a more accurate and fuller picture of developments as they’re occurring on the ground.

Can you give an example of how the anthropological perspective can enrich our understanding of religion?

I just completed a book on what I’m calling everyday religiosity. In the book, I’m looking at the category of [Ukrainian] people who describe themselves as “just Orthodox” (prosto pravoslavni). A large block of the population describes themselves in this amorphous way. Scholars often translate this as “simply Orthodox,” claiming that these Ukrainians are undecided and cannot choose allegiance to a particular denomination because they are not historically used to having a spectrum of denominations from which to choose. Even some scholars who claim to have particular expertise in Ukraine put forth those kinds of interpretations as to why people might identify themselves as prosto pravoslavni.

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