Saturday 30 November 2024

10:30am – 5:30pm

King’s College London – in person event.

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New ideas and new experiences are central to the experience of university, particularly for young people on campuses. During the ‘cult wars’ of the late 1970s-1990s, critics claimed that university campuses were prime sites for recruitment. And many new, minority and alternative religious and spiritual movements did wish to be active on campus, to reach idealistic young people with their proposals for a new future. University chaplains and student unions still contact Inform for information about new and unfamiliar religions which appear on campus – some of which have problematic practices around encouraging students to become too quickly and too heavily engaged in the movements at the expense of their studies and existing friends and interests.But alongside this more traditional picture of new religions on campuses, today students are exposed to new religious groups and movements in a plethora of ways. The boundaries between campus and online religion – as well as what is understood as religion – are shifting. The climate crisis is a concern for many students; many religious movements and individual students are involved in this activism – and climate activist movements themselves sometimes have a ‘religious’ element (considering the millenarianism of e.g. Extinction Rebellion). Engagement in these issues is also connected to identity politics; one’s position in the debate can be publicly displayed through visual imagery (badges, stickers), engagement with social media and joining organisations or connecting with others on campus. New forms of religious expression on social media engage the lived experiences of students, where TikTok and X can be the first port of call for information. How has this impacted the more traditional engagement with religions on campus, especially in terms of recruitment?

This seminar will explore some of the issues around new religions/religiosity on campus in the contemporary UK. We will hear from panels of speakers including chaplains, academics, PhD students and members and former members of religious movements. We will consider questions including ‘why do students love learning about cults?’; ‘what are chaplains’ primary concerns about new religions on campus?’ and ‘what are the primary roles that university religious organisations play in the lives of students today?’.
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