Religion in Praxis Conversations Series | Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

This is the tenth episode in the Religion in Praxis Conversations Series (previously known simply as "the Conversations Series") and today's speaker is Elizabeth Shakman Hurd.

While offering important perspectives on the myriad evidentiary assessment challenges facing adjudicators, the legal and social scientific literature bypasses the political theological questions that interest me here. What are the theological and political conditions that sustain practices of political and religious asylum seeking despite the persistent limitations and limits surrounding legal adjudication involving religion? Given the instability of the category of religion, why do the authorities persist in trying to establish whether a person, action, belief, or practice is credibly subject to religious persecution? How might we understand religion anew in this context?

To address these questions, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd approaches the question of religion in asylum seeking and claiming through the prism of theology, understood in this context as a mode of inquiry that takes the human as a question rather than as a given, and acknowledges the significance of human finitude rather than an assertion of human mastery. We situate the argument in the context of ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the migration crisis cause by this war.

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Music for the Conversation Series is generously provided by the Shavnabada Choir .The project author and the host of the Conversation Series is Dr. Tornike Metreveli.

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Religion and Theology is produced by Joel Kuhlin for the Center for Theology and Religious Studies. If you have comments or critique of this episode, or any other episodes of R&T, please contact us via the podcast's twitteraccount: @reloteol.