glossary

This is an ever-changing list of key terms we use in the episodes, listed alphabetically.
(Did we miss anything? Let us know!)

acoustemology:

  • From our #SmartGrrlSummer episode with Dr. Vicki Brennan! “Acoustemology” or “acoustic knowing”—that is, a nerdy academic term combining acoustic and epistemology. This describes how sound plus an awareness of sound is how people interpret their experiences.

agency:

  • the ability to act. In humanities and social science research, this often is used to talk about how all humans have choices, even when those choices are limited.

American minority religions:

  • a framework for thinking about religions in the US that have been minoritized, that are less prevalent or popular, or that are seen as offshoots, problems, “cults,” innovations, etc.

  • Megan prefers this framework in her scholarship to “cults” or “New Religious Movements.”

cult:

  • often, a religious group imagined to be sinister, “wrong,” “new,” or strange

  • as Megan points out, “cult” usually means “religion ‘we’ don’t like,” and spends a whole episode telling us why this term is rather insidious insofar as it couches and obscures prejudicial, problematic thinking about religious traditions, organizations, and groups

creedal:

  • In the study of religion, a term that describes religions in which beliefs are central.

  • along with votive, a pair of terms that helps make sense of how people do religion and how religions are categorized by scholars

  • but, along with votive, a pair of terms that highlights how central Christianity is: these Christian terms are applied across religions, religious practice as if they are universal!

Dalit:

  • a term for the lowest caste and uncasted individuals

  • this term replaces “untouchables” or “pariahs,” and is a term that low- and uncasted individuals and communities often use for themselves

  • while Hindu traditions cannot be reduced to caste, we can’t think about Hindu traditions without caste

descriptive: 

  • A point of view that seeks to explain--describe--all sorts of religious practices, interpretations, and uses, without committing to one correct way of doing things. This is how scholars of religion typically (or strive to) talk about religion.

diaspora:

  • a scattering of a once-geographically concentrated population. This means, among other things, that practitioners of diasporic religions have connections to places they might or might NOT have ever been to themselves.

disestablishment:

  • the legal concept in the first amendment to the US constitution that disallows official state support for or recognition of a church/religion. When we talked about this concept, we noted that while there is not official state support for one particular religion, we have seen, in US history, how particular religions do, in fact, dominate and stand in as normative practice in law.

epistemic/structural violence vs physical violence:

  • epistemic or structural violence refers to the damage experienced and caused by systems, institutions, and norms; scholar Gayatri Spivak uses “epistemic violence” in her famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” to specifically name the harm caused by discourse. Physical violence refers to the literal damage inflicted upon bodies. Though media, history, and our own experiences teach us to see physical violence, we know that words, policies, and institutions don’t have to bruise our bodies to do damage. Taken together, these provide a framework for thinking about the ways systems of oppression cause harm.

exegesis:

  • critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture(s)

fatwa:

  • a ruling or decision in Islamic jurisprudence; this is not the same as state-based law, but rather, a religious parameter for practice (i.e., a decision about the permissibility of a particular action).

free exercise:

  • the legal concept in the first amendment to the US constitution that allows people to practice their religion without government interference. When we talked about this concept, we noted that the US government has asserted its right to delineate proper practice but has largely held that it cannot interfere beliefs or opinions.

hajj:

  • hajj is the major Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and its surrounding area. It is often described as one of the so-called Five Pillars of Islam, and many Muslims hold that it is a requirement during their lifetimes; that said, there are many, many reasons why Muslims choose not to go or are exempted (in a religious law way) from going.

hegemony:

  • dominance, usually of one group over another. Scholars of social structures often use this term to indicate an idea, ideology, or power system that is impossible to ignore, escape, or think without.

Hindutva:

  • literally: “Hindu-ness”

  • a political ideology that asserts a Hindu ethno-nationalism

hybridity:

  • a theoretical concept to help us make sense of the messiness of religions, for us, that appear to be blended traditions. We used this concept to talk about African Diasporic Religions in Season 4, but also problematized it.

gender:

  • Megan described gender as a formula wherein

    • gender = identity assigned at birth (sex, the meaning we’ve assigned to specific body parts) + desire (whom/how/what/if you want to do with those parts) + expression (how you signal your identity & relationship with your body) + culture (how your expression of your identity & relationship with your body gets read by those around you).

  • gender is a social construct that helps us make sense of our bodies, what we do with our bodies, and isn’t only about gender (as the formula above suggests).

gurdwara:

  • Sikh place of worship

guru:

  • teacher, leader

    • in Hinduism and Buddhism (broadly!), a spiritual or religious leader or master, often a direct teacher with disciples

    • in Sikhi, guru refers to the first 10 leaders/teachers of Sikh tenets

    • in yoga, Western and otherwise, guru often refers to the instructor

Guru Granth Sahib:

  • central, primary holy work for Sikhs

minoritized:

  • a group that has been made a minority; that is, a group that has experienced a systemic removal of power or lack of access to power, often via racial, religious, ethnic, class, gender Othering.

minyan:

  • the quorum of ten adult Jews required to perform nightly worship (for some Jews, the adults must be men; for others, they may be of any gender; for most “adult” means “over 13”).

nationalism:

  • As we defined it on the pod, nationalism is an ideology—a system of ideas, especially that shapes worldviews. Specifically, nationalism is a kind of ideology that suggests people are a nation, and that nation ought to be sovereign (that is, this group of people are one thing and in charge of their own, one thing—able to rule themselves for themselves).

  • Importantly, nationalism conflates national belonging, or the right to be seen and protected as a “real” member of a nation, with race/ethnicity and/or religion. So anyone outside that “real” race/ethnicity/religion can’t be a “real” member of that nation—and should be seen as a threat to the nation if they argue for inclusion.

Native and Indigenous religions:

  • these are terms (note their capital letters) that refer to the traditions, cultures, ethnicities, practices, art, and more of Native or Indigenous peoples. As a singular term, they indicate the ways that individual First Nations, Nations, Confederacies, Tribes, and other group-specific terminology were reduced into one cogent thing by white (usually Christian) settler colonial systems and actors.

New Religious Movements (NRMs):

  • this framework comes out of the study of religion as a way to think about what folks may have once called “cults;” instead of using that pejorative, NRMs attempts to capture religious innovation, novelty, and change.

patriarchy:

  • a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women, trans folk, gender non-conforming folk, and gender fluid folk are largely excluded from it

  • this means not that men spend their time actively seeking to oppress or suppress non-men, but that systems have been set up specifically to benefit men over and above all others; and that all members of society, regardless of gender, come to value things associated with men and masculinity over and above all other ways of being

perennialism:

  • a term that refers to the notion that all world religions share a unified, universal, singular, metaphysical truth at its core; this is a school of thought that imagines all religions developed from one unique Truth (capital T) and all religions get at that truth. We talked about this as multiple pathways up the mountain: different ways of getting to the same end goal.

pop culture:

  • Popular culture usually refers to what “regular” “mainstream” folks might enjoy. So, for example, where opera is high culture, TV or certain shows on TV (like reality TV, for example), is not.

  • You should hear in our scare quotes that “regular” and “mainstream” always operates within systems of power. So why opera is “high culture” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a guilty pleasure, trashy, or just pop culture tells us a lot about what is valued, usually (you guessed it!) by wealthy, white, cis, hetero, American and European folks.

  • On the pod, pop culture is both a product (individual elements of media) and a framework through which to see how media, language, norms are produced through that product.

prescriptive:

  • A point of view that declares--prescribes--what is right and wrong, especially with regard to religion. This is often how theologians, religious practitioners, and religious leaders (like priests, imams, rabbis, etc.) talk about religion.

pulp:

  • is usually media (print, performance, audio-visual, etc) that folks consider sort of tasteless, garish, poor quality, sensationalist. It may be either fiction or nonfiction. So unlike other forms of popular media, like films or mainstream/networked TV, it’s easy to dismiss pulp, since it has the reputation of being “over the top” or “trash.”

race:

  • a social construct that groups people based on essential characteristics that includes but is not limited to physical features (including, of course, skin color).

    • Race can be oppressive (as in the case of racisms) but it can also be a space for creative flourishing.

racialization:

  • the process through which groups are made legible as coherent groups. Often mediated through ideas of the inherent truth of race theory: group belonging becomes an inheritable set of traits, those traits are prognostic of future behavior, and those traits diagnose the most essential pieces of a person’s or group’s character.

    • goes hand in hand with race and racism.

religious nationalism:

  • We suggested that religious nationalism is nationalism wherein religion and religious identity are primary factors in the idea of the nation. Seems simple. It is not, dear nerds. For a full list of how we talked about religious nationalism, see here.

Riot Grrls:

  • our inspiration for 2020’s Smart Grrl Summer, the original Riot Grrls were an underground feminist punk movement in the 1990s, especially the Pacific Northwest of the US and Seattle and Portland in particular. Women-led bands within this music scene addressed topics often imagined outside the norms for music writ large, drawing on earlier generations of punk to sing about rape, abuse, race/class/gender/sexuality, The Patriarchy, and women’s empowerment. The Riot Grrl movement and music was led by bands like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and more.

ritual:

  • a series of actions usually performed in a prescribed way

  • just like “religion” or “religious,” ritual has a lot of scholarly definitions and debates! We recommended Catherine Bell for a comprehensive (as in, a book-long) exploration. Malory Nye’s chapter “Ritual,” in Religion: the Basics, also does a great overview of the complex ways that ritual can be defined, from things like saying hello in passing to major rites, like hajj.

secularism:

  • Another complex work with many definitions!

  • While secularism is often seen as the principles behind the separation of church from state, for scholars of religion, secularism is complicated by thinking about it not as the opposite to religion but as part of a spectrum of practices and histories that allow for the idea that religion can be separated from public spheres in the first place.

social constructs:

  • systems, ideas, ideologies that exists because of human interactions. They may not exist in a way that is stable or “touchable,” but are nevertheless real because of how they are enforced through social interaction. (Gender, race, and ethnicity are common examples of social constructs!)

soundscape:

  • From our #SmartGrrlSummer episode with Dr. Vicki Brennan, who defined soundscape as everything that is part of what we hear: singing or musicking; praying, chanting, even just communicating; and what we might think of as ambient sounds that are not often explicitly acknowledged or recognized but that form some of the texture of religious practice. 

spiritual:

  • when talking about religion, spiritual is often seen as its less dogmatic, less formal corollary; like “religion” and “religious,” this is a term that has flexible definitions and a lot of debate around what it really is. In our episode, we talked about “spiritual” as a way that people identify practices, beliefs, and systems that carry deeper, perhaps universalized meaning (think Truth, capital T) outside or purposefully in opposition to religious institutions (think The Church).

world religions and major religions:

  • related frameworks of grouping traditions into one seamless structure. “World religions” and “major religion” often refer to demographically large or historically important religions—as determined by EuroAmerican scholars, systems, and organizations.

voluntary/voluntarism:

  • In the study of religion, terms that describe the ability of religious individuals to choose their religion.

  • In our episode, we talked about how while most religions value individual choice (i.e., a person’s belief in the Divine or a person’s decision to participate in a ritual), whether or not religious people are seen as having that choice is a loaded concept (because religions are racialized!).

votive:

  • In the study of religion, a term that describes religions in which practice or action is central.

  • along with creedal, a pair of terms that helps make sense of how people do religion and how religions are categorized by scholars

  • but, along with creedal, a pair of terms that highlights how central Christianity is: these Christian terms are applied across religions, religious practice as if they are universal!