These are interviews I’ve done for the Social Science Research Council and its blog, The Immanent Frame, with leading thinkers on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. They’re collected as a series under the name “Deathless Questions.”

The Shining and the Shiny
The Immanent Frame, October 24, 2011
Sean Dorrance Kelly proposes a new approach to ancient polytheism.
[ link | pdf ]

Religious Liberty, Minorities, and Islam
The Immanent Frame, August 17, 2011
Saba Mahmood thinks through revolution and multiculturalism.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

The Suspicious Revolution
The Immanent Frame, August 3, 2011
Jadaliyya, August 23, 2011
Anthropologist Talal Asad reflects on his experience in Cairo during revolution against Mubarak.
[ link | link | pdf | discussion ]

The Rubicon Is in Egypt
The Immanent Frame, June 7, 2011
Azza Karam on the Arab revolutions, televised and otherwise.
[ link | pdf ]

Reading the Paranormal Writing Us
The Immanent Frame, April 26, 2011
Jeff Kripal explains the unexplainable.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Implicated and Enraged
The Immanent Frame, April 1, 2011
Judith Butler discusses violence, power, and the geopolitics of Jewishness.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

The Science of People Power
The Immanent Frame, February 17, 2011
Just days after the Egyptian revolution, a conversation with Gene Sharp, the foremost living strategist of nonviolent struggle.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

What Is Oprah?
The Immanent Frame, January 26, 2011
Kathryn Lofton on the gospel of an American icon.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Greedy Time
The Immanent Frame, January 10, 2011
Patrick Lee Miller explains how the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus embraced contradiction.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Endgame Capitalism
The Immanent Frame, December 10, 2010
Simon During thinks at the intersection of capitalism, secularity, and literary theory.
[ link | pdf ]

More than Politics
The Immanent Frame, November 19, 2010
Theologian Charles Villa-Vicencio on his work with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the emergence of a new kind of spirituality.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Romanticism, Reflexivity, Design
The Immanent Frame, October 27, 2010
Colin Jager discusses romanticism, secularism, and design arguments for the existence of God.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Peace from the Ground Up
The Immanent Frame, October 12, 2010
Maya Leguro talks about the challenges and successes of peacebuilding in the Philippines.
[ link | pdf ]

The Future of China’s Past
The Immanent Frame, September 23, 2010
Anthropologist Mayfair Yang describes the resurgence of religion in today’s post-Maoist China.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Cosmic War on a Global Scale
The Immanent Frame, July 23, 2010
Mark Juergensmeyer discusses religion, violence, and the war on terror.
[ link | pdf ]

Religion, Science, and the Humanities
The Immanent Frame, June 21, 2010
Literary theorist Barbara Herrnstein Smith talks about the prospects of a new naturalistic account of religion.
[ link | pdf ]

Spirituality, Entangled
The Immanent Frame, June 1, 2010
Courtney Bender discusses her new book about the “new metaphysicals” in Cambridge, MA.
[ link | pdf ]

Religion Gone Global
The Immanent Frame, May 27, 2010
Radical ideas on Palestine, Jesus, and the academy from writer, scholar, and filmmaker Reza Aslan.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Religions and Reasons
The Immanent Frame, May 17, 2010
Religious and philosophical ethicist Richard Amesbury talks about human rights, the definition of religion, and New Atheism.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

The Right to Truth
The Immanent Frame, April 19, 2010
Scholar and human rights activist Eduardo Gonzalez talks about the performances that make reconciliation possible in post-conflict societies.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Orthodox Paradox
The Immanent Frame, March 17, 2010
Controversial Anglican theologian John Milbank talks about his dialogue with atheist philosopher Slavoj Zizek and how theology can speak relevantly to politics.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Religious Peacemaking in a Secular World
The Immanent Frame, March 10, 2010
An interview with Andrea Bartoli, the U.S. representative of the Catholic lay organization Sant’Egidio and professor of conflict resolution at George Mason University.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Making Compassion Cool
The Immanent Frame, January 27, 2010
An interview with historian of religions Karen Armstrong about her new Charter for Compassion initiative and its relation to the ideas she has been developing in her more than 20 books.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

The Study of Special Experiences
The Immanent Frame, January 4, 2010
In this interview, historian and theorist of religious experience Ann Taves discusses her new book, Religious Experience Reconsidered, as well as her new role as president of the American Academy of Religion.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Beginning with Witness
The Immanent Frame, December 8, 2009
An interview with Mark Johnson, executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization that stood in opposition to two world wars and helped foster the civil rights movement’s ethic of nonviolence, in addition to being an early advocate for interfaith dialogue.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Life After Past Evil
The Immanent Frame, November 13, 2009
An interview with Daniel Philpott, a leading theorist of global politics and religion who proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework for peacebuilding in the wake of conflict.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Age of Spirit
The Immanent Frame, October 30, 2009
An interview with Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, who dares to declare that a drastically different role for religion in society is close at hand.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Spiritual Machines
The Immanent Frame, October 5, 2009
An interview with John Lardas Modern, who draws on the Beat poets, phrenologists, prison reformers, and Moby-Dick to show why taking technology seriously forces us to think differently about the boundaries of religion.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Religion for Radicals
The Immanent Frame, September 17, 2009
An interview with literary critic Terry Eagleton about his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Religion Takes the Stand
The Immanent Frame, August 11, 2009; AlterNet, September 8, 2009
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan discusses the failure of the courts to grapple with lived religion, the crisis of prisons in the United States, and why, in some sense at least, we are all religious now.
[ link (The IF) | link (AlterNet) | pdf | discussion ]

Agency as a Vocation
The Social Science Research Council, March 31, 2009
The philosopher of religion talks about agency and Obama, lessons learned from Cornel West, and the story behind his immersion in a modern dance project.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]

Author, Meet Blog
The Social Science Research Council, December 10, 2008
Historian of ideas Mark Lilla explains how he ended up writing a book about political theology, what blogging on The Immanent Frame did for the book, and why he’s reading very selectively these days.
[ link | pdf | discussion ]