Theme 1: Religious Foundations

• Religious values and aspirations.
• Sacred sources: sites, narratives, texts.
• Religious philosophies and philosophies of religion.
• Theological sources and resources.
• World sources: religious and secular cosmologies.
• Creation accounts in science and religion
• World destinies: religious and secular eschatologies.
• Reason and faith: congruencies and conflicts.
• Traditional, modern, and postmodern orientations to religion.
• Science and religion: congruencies and conflicts on the sources of design in the natural world.
• Religious counterpoints: agnosticism, atheism, materialism and secularism.
• Religious prophets: their messages and their meanings.
• Religiosity: measures, forms and levels of religious commitment.
• Religion and law.
• Religion and commerce.
• The natural, the human and the supernatural.
• Rites and sites of passage: birth, adulthood, marriage, death.
• Medical ethics and bioethics.
• Anthropologies, psychologies and sociologies of religion.

Theme 2: Religious Community and Socialization

• Religious institutional governance.
• Symbology in theory and practice.
• Religious education and religion studies.
• Religiously-based schools and religion in public schools.
• Religion in ethnic, national and racial identities.
• Congregations and religious community.
• Media for religious messages.
• Evangelism and conversion.
• Ritual, rite, liturgy.
• Prayer, contemplation, and meditation.
• Religious ‘ways of life’ and lifeworld practices.
• Religious art and architecture.
• Pilgrimage, tourism, and the search for spiritual meaning.
• Religious leadership.

Theme 3: Religious Commonalities and Differences

• Comparative studies of religion.
• Monotheism, polytheism and immanentist religions.
• Indigenous or first nation spiritualities.
• Inter-religious harmony.
• Interfaith dialogue.
• Religious diversity, tolerance and understanding.
• Religions in globalization.
• Centrifugal and centripetal forces: difference and interdependence.
• Denominationalism: tendencies to fracture and recombination.
• Literal and metaphorical readings of sacred texts.
• Meditation as healing and therapy.
• Religion, identity, and ethnicity.
• The management of ethnic and religious diversity.
• Interreligious education.
• The nation state and religious exceptionalism.
• Religious dual belonging.
• Interfaith dialogue and international interfaith organizations.

Theme 4: The Politics of Religion

• Religion in politics and the politics of religion.
• Modernity and religious frameworks.
• Religious freedom in secular states.
• Chaplaincies and the state.
• Politics, society and religion in religiously defined states.
• Religious minorities and the state.
• Social agendas for religion: sustainability, justice, peace.
• Religious divisions and social conflicts.
• Religiously inspired violence and non-violence.
• Gender, sexuality and religion.
• Women, patriarchy, and the sacred feminine.
• Religion as a source of community cohesion or community dissonance.
• Terrorism, political extremism and religion.
• Religion and human security.
• Religion and global ethics.
• Religion and human rights.
• Religion and reconciliation.
• The future of religion.