Short Abstract:

To launch the first series of articles of DeGruyter’s Religious Minorities Online, two of its editors will discuss with various specialists several of the theoretical issues that frequently arise in the study of religious minorities.

Long Abstract:

Religious Minorities Online is an open-access publication published twice a year by DeGruyter and co-edited by Erica Baffelli, Alexander van der Haven, and Michael Stausberg. This roundtable discussion launches the first series of peer-reviewed articles published in the first half of 2023.

The articles in the collection are organized around three main sections, focusing on Themes, Countries, or Communities. Furthermore, shorter contributions introducing new data, source collections, or commentaries on current events related to religious minorities will be published throughout the year.

For this roundtable discussion, we invite panelists to reflect on issues that frequently arise in the study of religious minorities and also emerged in our project when attempting to collect and create scholarship with a broad global, theoretical, and historical scope.

One of the central issues concerns the definition of religious minorities, both in terms of criteria used in different contexts and legal definitions, but also related to power dynamics inherent to processes of labeling and othering. Other discussions are around social consequences of stereotyping, exotifying, and officially recognizing religious minorities; the problematic place of recognizing communities rather than individuals in the history of liberal political theory; and processes of diversification inside religious minorities themselves.

The roundtable will bring attention to the study of religious minorities and the issues and challenges involved with this study that are also profoundly relevant to the study of religion in general.