Editorial: Religion resituated

After a period of intense rumors in our academic community that the former publisher of this journal was seeking a buyer for it, the editors were finally informed, in early November of 2010, that Religion was being sold to Informa. As of this issue, the journal will be published as one of the Routledge Arts & Humanities journals.1 The editors, editorial board and editorial assistant remain the same.

For our authors and referees this change means that a different electronic submission system is in place, but the basic procedure for submission remains the same, including our rigorous review process. (See Engler and Stausberg 2010 for an overview of that process.) As readers of the journal will notice, the format and the font have changed, resulting in a more readable page. We endorse this change since it brings the journal's appearance more in line with the expectations and preferences of our readership. The new cover colors flag the transition, while the basic cover design signals continuity (even to maintaining the problematic heritage of a seemingly seamless translatability of the concept of ‘religion’). Last but not least, we have taken the opportunity provided by this move to a new publisher to adopt a different citation style (to be published on the journal's new homepage).2 Where the previous style was an Elsevier standard, we have been given the freedom to choose one that we feel is more appropriate for a Religious Studies journal.

Upon donning our editorial hats in 2008, we introduced a new classification of content for the journal: regular issues, special issues, forums, review symposiums and review panels (Stausberg and Engler 2008: 5-6). We intend to continue with these categories, but the categories of forums and special issues are now collated into the overall category of thematic issues. During the past three years, Religion has published special issues on the following topics:

•	cognitive science of religion (38/2, 2008);3
•	the centenary of Mircea Eliade (38/4, 2008);4
•	religion in Western Europe (39/2, 2009);5
•	the philosophy of science and the study of religion (39/4, 2009);6
•	religions, naturals hazards and disasters (40/2, 2010).7

In addition, during this same period, the journal published review panels on three books:

•	Ann Taves' Religious Experience Reconsidered (2009);8
•	Gregory Alles' (ed.) Religious Studies: A Global View (2008);9
•	Qadri Ismail's Abiding by Sri Lanka (2008).10

The present issue contains another review panel, on Patrick McNamara's The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (2009).11 We look forward to continuing with this feature, which allows for rich discussions of important publications and thereby advances significant debates in the field. In addition, Religion has published a total of 138 book reviews in the period from 2008 to 2010. Under the direction of book-review editor Stephen C. Berkwitz, Religion will continue to publish some six to ten book reviews per issue, as a general rule.

Religion has a proud tradition of publishing surveys of the study of religion in different countries and parts of the world. We have continued this tradition with a series of articles on Western Europe (Stausberg 2007; 2008; 2009a)12 and with an article on France (Boespflug 2010). The study of religion in Francophone Canada is addressed in the present issue (Gardaz 2011). Religion also continues to publish overview articles on fields of research such as New Testament Studies in the 20th century (Hurtado 2009) and Religion in America (Tweed 2010). From time to time, Religion also publishes articles that critically reflect on recent developments in religions such as the so-called Emerging Church (Bielo 2009), the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) (Sadgrove et al. 2010), and the 2009 Swiss minaret ban (Mayer 2011).

Back in 2008, we introduced three new features, which we would like to briefly review here. These particular features make Religion unique among Religious Studies journals. The first is a series of articles on ‘Journals and venues’ that offers critical (self-) assessments of the history, focus, scope and contribution of print and online journals that have explored specific fields of research. To date the following publication venues have been featured: The Journal of Media and Religion (Stout and Buddenbaum 2008), Material Religion (Meyer et al. 2010), and Implicit Religion (Bailey 2010). With the editors of these journals reviewing their publications for Religion, our readers are kept up to date on developments in these specialized fields.

The second feature is a series of articles, called “‘Religion” in retrospect’, in which senior scholars of religion offer their general thoughts on the concept of ‘religion’ and the study of religion. To date Benson Saler (2008) and André Droogers (2010) have written for the series. Saler's article prompted two replies, from Timothy Fitzgerald (2009) and Robert McCauley (2009), to which Saler replied in turn (Saler 2009a; 2009b).13 Religion welcomes this kind of exchange, as with the earlier discussion between Wouter Hanegraaff (2008) and Jeffrey Kripal (2008).

The third feature, ‘Global contributions’, aims at publishing English translations of research articles by respected scholars who write in other languages. For different reasons, this has so far resulted in only two translations: Clara Mafra's article on views of religion and public space among different religious groups in favelas in Rio de Janeiro (2008); and Francois Boespflug's above-mentioned survey article (2010). We continue to make an effort to publish translations of recent work published in languages other than English. We are pleased that the new publisher will continue to fund occasional translations, with an article on modern Shinto (translated from Japanese) scheduled to appear later in 2011. This is, to our knowledge, a unique feature among academic journals in the study of religion.

Religion has recently published its first ‘target article’, one that makes a significant argument on a specific issue and that is followed by two or more responses by experts in the area, potentially with a response from the author(s) of the main article. The first target article to appear was ‘Religion is Natural, Atheism is Not: On Why Everybody is Both Right and Wrong’ (Geertz and Markússon 2010), with two responses (Barrett 2010; Bering 2010). We hope to develop this into a regular feature of the journal.

We would like to close by underlining Religion's commitment to publishing articles that combine a substantive focus with methodological and theoretical contributions. This concern, manifested in all accepted articles, extends to publishing work that focuses more specifically on methods (e.g., smallest-space analysis [Cohen 2008], conversation analysis [Lehtinen 2009], and fieldwork [Dawson 2010]) and on theory (e.g., Clack 2008; Segal 2008; Davis 2009; Gardiner and Engler 2010), in addition to a wide range of studies on empirical and historical cases. As stated in the Aims & Scopes statement of the journal (as revised in 2008/2009), Religion seeks to publish studies that engage significant empirical materials and that ‘frame their research questions and present their results in terms of relevant theoretical or methodological discussions. Purely descriptive papers are not generally accepted for publication … All publications in Religion are intended to be of interest to a wide audience of academic scholars of religion; submitted work should be presented in a manner intelligible to more than specialists.’ We look forward to continuing this mission in our new publishing home. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude for the efforts of Religion's authors – both published and aspiring – and referees, who make it possible for this journal to exist.

Notes

¹Informa is the fifth company to have published Religion: Oriel Press (1971–72), Routledge & Kegan Paul (1973–80), Academic Press (1981–2000) Elsevier (2001–10), and now Informa, under the Routledge imprint of its Taylor & Francis division. In a sense, this marks a return to the Routledge fold, though that imprint has changed hands several times since Routledge & Kegan Paul published the journal in the 1970s. For more detail on the history of this journal and its continued allegiance to a vision of a ‘rounded’, non-theological, theoretically and methodologically informed approach to study of religion see Stausberg and Engler (2008).

² http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0048721X.asp

³Barrett and Lanman 2008; Liénard and Lawson 2008; Pyysiäinen 2008; Sanderson 2008; Taves 2008.

⁴Allen 2008; Calinescu 2008; Chlup 2008; Gardaz 2008a; Gardaz 2008b; Rennie 2008; Ricketts 2008; Spineto 2008.

⁵Bowman 2009; Cipriani 2009; Diez de Velasco 2009; Dix 2009; Fibiger 2009; Knott 2009; Krech 2009; Martikainen 2009; Mikaelsson 2009; Repstad 2009; Stausberg 2009b.

⁶Geertz 2009; Goldberg 2009; J.S. Jensen 2009 Machamer 2009; Rennie 2009a; Rennie 2009b; Ryba 2009; Saler 2009c; Segal 2009.

⁷Chester and Duncan 2010; Dove 2010; Falk 2010; Gaillard and Texier 2010; Merli 2010; Schlehe 2010; Wisner 2010.

⁸Alles 2009; Benavides 2010; Curtis 2010; Day 2010; Fitzgerald 2010; T. Jensen 2009; Joy 2009; Kirkpatrick 2010; Knott 2010; Proudfoot 2010; Spickard 2010; Stausberg 2010; Stuckrad 2010; Sutcliffe 2009; Taves 2010; Wiebe 2009; Wiegers 2009.

⁹Alles 2009; T. Jensen 2009; Joy 2009; Sutcliffe 2009; Wiebe 2009; Wiegers 2009.

¹⁰Abeysekara 2008; Berkwitz 2008; Ismail 2008; Turner 2008; Whitaker 2008.

¹¹Bulkeley 2011; Lindahl and Chilcott 2011; McNamara 2011; Schjødt 2011; Taves 2011a; Taves 2011b.

¹²Stausberg's series of three articles was commissioned and accepted by the previous editors of Religion, Robert A. Segal and Thomas Ryba.

¹³See also Laine (2010) for reflections on the concept of religion.