TOFAC 2019

This conference will examine all the major narratives and theories of religion and politics produced by scholars and policy-makers over the years. It will encourage intellectual collaboration and production from within and/or focused on Africa and the African Diaspora. It will also contribute to contemporary discourse on religion, the State, and Global Politics, in order to illuminate Africa’s position in global religions, international policy, and national development and identity formation. Participants are expected to critically question and hopefully set aside misleading representations and narratives on African religious experience.

In the past, scholars of African religion and politics have engaged topics such as missionary activities, colonialism, and the spread of religion in Africa, as well as questions of cultural survival or defeat. In Western societies, policies and narratives regarding religion are often produced under the assumption that the Church and the State remain fundamentally and ideologically separate. Meanwhile, the connections between religion and state are becoming increasingly relevant worldwide. The global community is being confronted with violent terrorism, which is often tied to organized religion, wrongly or rightly by the media, the State, and international government and non-governmental organizations. Therefore, in the contemporary geopolitical landscape, state policymakers and scholars of politics, state formation, international relations, and globalization can hardly ignore issues of religion, raising questions of religious freedom, tolerance, violence, and oppression. In light of the oversimplified, popular rhetoric surrounding religion and state policy, scholars and policymakers are tasked to think conceptually and empirically about the role of religion in the state and in international affairs.

Whereas Western scholarship has necessarily focused on the tensions between religions and secularisms at the State and international level, and on producing responses to religious terrorist movements such as ISIS and Boko Haram, there is also the need to explore alternative indigenous religions and spiritualities in Africa and the African Diaspora, to uncover local expressions and practices of religion in Africa and their impact on State policy, social organization, and/or global connections, and to analyze recent developments by African states to foster or hamper religious movements and understandings in Africa. It is also useful to consider the Diasporic movement of religious ideas and practices across national boundaries. Approaching these issues from within the African and African Diasporic context, it is important to reconsider hegemonic understandings of religion, as well as hegemonic understandings of nationalism, policy, and development.

The conference will attempt to push the boundaries of Western epistemology and engage African knowledge as a means of working through popular assumptions and contentious debates about the past, present, and future of Africa, African religions, spiritualities, and secularisms, and the connections between local, national, and global politics.

While many participants will present in English, we encourage presentations in other languages, most notably in Ajami, Arabic, and French.

A cross-disciplinary approach is necessary for understanding the entanglement of religion, the State, and global politics in Africa and the African Diaspora. Therefore, this conference welcomes paper submissions from a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to history, political science, sociology, religious studies, philosophy, economics, international relations, peace and conflict studies, literary and cultural studies, communication and language studies, education, management sciences, and area studies. We encourage scholars, activists, politicians, policy makers, and other contributors to the conference to consider the following sub-themes