Hijacked - A Critical Treatment of the Public Rhetoric of Good and Bad Religion - Leslie Dorrough Smith
1. Introduction: "And What Kind of Society Does that Create?"
Hijacked - A Critical Treatment of the Public Rhetoric of Good and Bad Religion - Leslie Dorrough Smith
Russell T. McCutcheon [+]
University of Alabama
Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and, for 18 years, was the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He has written on problems in the academic labor market throughout his 30-year career and helped to design and run Alabama’s skills-based M.A. in religion in culture. Among his recent work is the edited resource for instructors, Teaching in Religious Studies and Beyond (Bloomsbury 2024).
Description
This essay introduces the first section of the volume “Hijacked: A Critical Treatment of the Public Rhetoric of Good and Bad Religion,” edited by Leslie Dorrough Smith, Steffen Führding, and Adrian Hermann. It contributes to an analysis of the political deployment of the good/bad religion distinction and asks what is at stake when such categories emerge as the self-evident principles upon which supposedly rigorous scholarship on religion is grounded.