New St Andrews research project
A major new international research project at the University of St Andrews will investigate one of the most significant transformations in contemporary Western Christianity - and ask what those leaving or reimagining Christianity might have to teach theology itself.
‘Godless Religion’, a new three-year research project based in the University of St Andrews School of Divinity, will ask: what might religious disaffiliation and changing forms of belief reveal about Christianity and Christian theology itself?
Dr Dani Jansen, co-lead of the project, said: “Religious disaffiliation is often treated as a problem to be explained: Why are people leaving Christianity, and what might bring them back? We want to ask a different question. What if those who leave are identifying genuine problems in the ways Christians have thought about God, authority, human freedom, and hope?
“’Godless Religion’ begins from the conviction that theology should not simply study religious disaffiliation from a distance. It should be willing to learn from it.”
The project will investigate three interconnected themes over three years: autonomy, asking what the desire for greater intellectual and personal freedom reveals about Christian accounts of human agency; authority, examining how religious authority becomes credible—or loses its credibility; and Christian pessimism, exploring how Christian theology might speak meaningfully about hope, suffering, and human fragility without resorting to easy answers or triumphalism.”
Professor Oliver Crisp, co-lead of the project and Professor of Analytic Theology at the University of St Andrews, said: “Changes in religious identity raise fundamental theological questions about what it means to believe. Must being a Christian involve believing that Christian claims correspond to a mind-independent reality? Or are there other ways of understanding Christian belief, identity, and practice?
“These are not simply questions about why religion is declining. They are questions about what Christianity is and what it means to participate in it. ‘Godless Religion’ creates an opportunity for theology to reconsider some of its most basic assumptions in light of the ways people are actually negotiating religious belief today.”
Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Godless Religion brings together an international network of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of religion.
The project will support established scholars and postdoctoral research teams alongside an early-career funding programme for scholars completing their PhDs or within the first two years after receiving their doctorate. Participants will work across disciplinary boundaries through research seminars, workshops, conferences, and collaborative writing.
Over its three years, ‘Godless Religion’ will produce two major books, more than twenty peer-reviewed journal articles, research from four postdoctoral fellows, year-long projects from six early-career scholars, public-facing writing, and an online platform making the project’s research accessible beyond the academy.
Applications are currently open for the project’s early-career funding opportunities.